Jane Fonda Biography

Jane Fonda is the two-time Oscar-winning actress who has starred in Klute, On Golden Pond and dozens of other films in a career lasting more than 50 years.

The daughter of screen legend Henry Fonda (and the sister of actor Peter Fonda), Jane Fonda got her start in the movies with the forgotten 1960 comedy Tall Story. A decade later she was a movie star in her own right, having gone from the sex kitten in 1968’s Barbarella to an Oscar-winning role as a mysterious call girl in the detective drama Klute (1971, directed by Alan Pakula). Seven years later she won another Oscar for her role in the Vietnam War drama Coming Home (1978).

Jane Fonda was also famous as an outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1970s. She made a highly publicized 1972 trip to Hanoi, denouncing U.S. policy and earning the uncomplimentary nickname “Hanoi Jane” — a stunt she never lived down. She married political activist Tom Hayden in 1973 and backed his run for the U.S. Senate in 1976, but their turbulent marriage ended in 1990.

In the 1980s she suddenly had a new career as an exercise guru, starring in and producing a long series of “Jane Fonda’s Workout” exercise videos and books. She married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and semi-retired from the movies. They separated in 2000 and Fonda filed for divorce in April of 2001.

Jane Fonda’s other films include The China Syndrome (1979, with Jack Lemmon), 9 to 5 (1980, with Dolly Parton), Stanley and Iris (1990, with Robert DeNiro), Monster-in-Law (2005, with Jennifer Lopez), Peace, Love and Misnderstanding (2011) and The Butler (2013, with Fonda playing former First Lady Nancy Reagan). She also had a late-career boost from series television, starring in The Newsroom (2012-14) and Grace and Frankie (2015-17, with Lily Tomlin).

She was given a Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute in 2014.