Biography
Ranking number 21 on Empire magazine’s 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History, veteran performer and fitness advocate Jane Fonda built a career around breakthrough titles such as Klute, Barefoot in the Park, Barbarella, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, and On Golden Pond. The last of those marked the sole on-screen pairing with her father, Henry Fonda (12 Angry Men, The Grapes of Wrath), and earned her an Oscar nomination. Across her work she collected seven Academy Award nominations and two wins while also securing five of ten Golden Globe nominations, all while repeatedly seeking out complex roles for women. Later films included Julia, Coming Home, Agnes of God, 9 to 5, and Stanley and Iris.
A Vassar graduate once branded a radical for her feminist and political stances in the 1960s and 1970s, Fonda is now frequently recalled less for her acting than for the workout videos that ignited an aerobics boom in the 1980s. Those releases, covering prenatal exercise and yoga among other formats, generated an estimated $670 million in tape and merchandise sales—surpassing her entire film earnings.
Her entry into performance came through family lineage rather than early ambition. At seventeen she appeared alongside her father in a 1954 community-theater staging of The Country Girl, after which she trained at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. Her Broadway role in Tall Story transferred to the screen and became her cinematic debut. Henry Fonda’s daughter and Peter Fonda’s sister, she endured a strained paternal relationship and lost her mother to suicide at age thirteen; she herself battled bulimia from high school until thirty-six. Three marriages ended in divorce, the final one to CNN founder Ted Turner, and she is mother to four children as well as aunt to Bridget Fonda. Media scrutiny followed her at every stage.
After a period of reduced screen work, Fonda returned in 2001 for a benefit presentation of The Vagina Monologues; the preceding year she filmed a project in Nigeria advocating an end to female genital mutilation. She has also published multiple books.
A Vassar graduate once branded a radical for her feminist and political stances in the 1960s and 1970s, Fonda is now frequently recalled less for her acting than for the workout videos that ignited an aerobics boom in the 1980s. Those releases, covering prenatal exercise and yoga among other formats, generated an estimated $670 million in tape and merchandise sales—surpassing her entire film earnings.
Her entry into performance came through family lineage rather than early ambition. At seventeen she appeared alongside her father in a 1954 community-theater staging of The Country Girl, after which she trained at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. Her Broadway role in Tall Story transferred to the screen and became her cinematic debut. Henry Fonda’s daughter and Peter Fonda’s sister, she endured a strained paternal relationship and lost her mother to suicide at age thirteen; she herself battled bulimia from high school until thirty-six. Three marriages ended in divorce, the final one to CNN founder Ted Turner, and she is mother to four children as well as aunt to Bridget Fonda. Media scrutiny followed her at every stage.
After a period of reduced screen work, Fonda returned in 2001 for a benefit presentation of The Vagina Monologues; the preceding year she filmed a project in Nigeria advocating an end to female genital mutilation. She has also published multiple books.
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