A Celebration of Women™

is elated to Celebrate the Life of a woman that has embraced life with fervor and spirit.  

Always Taking Action for her beliefs, standing up for her causes and never allowing obstacles to stop her powerful energy to move forward, even when her activities were considered controversial. Enjoy our Tribute to her Life.

She describes herself as a ‘liberal and a feminist’.

 
 
 

WOMAN of ACTION™

 

 

Jane Fonda 

 
 
 
Jane Fonda (born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda; December 21, 1937) is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Fonda started her film career as a star, as she made her film debut with the leading role in Tall Story, released in 1960. She built on her early success with such popular films as Cat Ballou and Barbarella, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances in Klute and Coming Home.

Fonda has received five other Academy Award nominations in addition to her two wins.

Fonda has been an activist for many political causes; her opposition to the Vietnam War and associated activities were controversial. She describes herself as a ‘liberal and a feminist‘.

Divorced from French film director Roger Vadim, political activist Tom Hayden, and media mogul Ted Turner, Fonda has been a self-proclaimed Christian since 2001.

Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda was born in New York City, the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw. Fonda’s surname originates from her patrilineal Dutch ancestry; she is also of English descent. She was named after the third wife of English king Henry VIII, Lady Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother’s side.

Her brother, Peter Fonda (born 1940), and his daughter Bridget Fonda, also are actors. Fonda had a maternal half-sister, Frances, who died in 2008. In 1950, when Fonda was 12, her mother committed suicide while under treatment at a psychiatric hospital. Later that year Fonda’s father married socialite Susan Blanchard (born 1928), nine years his daughter’s senior; this marriage would end in divorce.

At age 15, Fonda taught dance at Fire Island Pines, New York. She attended the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, but dropped out to become a fashion model. She was twice featured on the cover of Vogue.
 
Feminist causes

Fonda has been a longtime supporter of feminist causes, including V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women, inspired by the off-Broadway hit The Vagina Monologues, of which she is an honorary chairperson.

She was present at their first summit in 2002, bringing together founder Eve Ensler, Afghan women oppressed by the Taliban, and a Kenyan activist campaigning to save girls from genital mutilation.

In 2001, Fonda established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; the goal of the center is to prevent adolescent pregnancy through training and program development.

On February 16, 2004, Fonda led a march through Ciudad Juárez, with Sally Field, Eve Ensler, and other women, urging Mexico to provide sufficient resources to newly appointed officials helping investigate the murders of hundreds of women in the rough border city.

In 2004, she served as a mentor to the first ever all-transsexual cast of The Vagina Monologues.

In the days before the Swedish election on September 17, 2006, Fonda went to Sweden to support the new political party Feministiskt initiativ in their election campaign.

In My Life So Far Fonda says that she considers patriarchy to be harmful to men as well as women. She also states that for many years, she feared to call herself a feminist, because she believed that all feminists were “anti-male”. But now, with her increased understanding of patriarchy, she feels that feminism is beneficial to both men and women, and states that she “still loves men”.

She states that when she divorced Ted Turner, she felt like she had also divorced the world of patriarchy, and was very happy to have done so.
 

 
The actress, age 73, doesn’t need a man but she’s happy to have him.
 
 
Writing

On April 5, 2005, Random House released Fonda’s autobiography My Life So Far.

The book describes her life as a series of three acts, each thirty years long, and declares that her third “act” will be her most significant, due in part to her commitment to the Christian religion, and that it will determine the things for which she will be remembered.

Fonda’s autobiography was well received by book critics, and was noted to be “as beguiling and as maddening as Jane Fonda herself” in its Washington Post review, pronouncing her a “beautiful bundle of contradictions”.

The New York Times called the book “achingly poignant”.

In January 2009, Fonda started chronicling her Broadway return in a blog, with posts ranging from her Pilates class to her fears and excitement about her new play.

She also uses Twitter and has a Facebook page.

In 2011 Fonda published a new book: Prime Time: Making the most of all of your Life. The book offers stories from her own life as well as from the lives of others, giving her perspective on how to better live what she calls “the critical years from 45 and 50, and especially from 60 and beyond” in areas of Love, health, sex, fitness, friendship, spirit.

Her many successful films include: Period of Adjustment, Sunday in New York, Barefoot in the Park, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Fun with Dick and Jane, Julia, The China Syndrome, The Electric Horseman, Nine to Five, Agnes of God, The Morning After, and On Golden Pond, which was the only film she made with her father, Henry Fonda.
 
 
 
She announced her retirement from acting in 1990, but returned to the screen 15 years later in the 2005 film Monster in Law, and has since resumed her career. She also produced and starred in over 20 exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995, and once again in 2010.

” Her mission today is one of promotion, not protest …”

And, just like her career, her romantic situation also is on the upswing. After about seven years of celibacy following her divorce from Turner — she remains close to his five kids and says they are in touch regularly, noting, “I just got two e-mails from him today” — she entered into a relationship with superstar record producer Richard Perry, 69, in 2009.

“My love life is wonderful,” she says. “He is one of the very best.”

They met 38 years ago at a get-together thrown by Perry when her second husband, Tom Hayden, was running for the U.S. Senate.

The couple are selling his Hollywood Hills house and buying a new one. Oddly, Perry’s home “was built by Ronald Reagan when he was with Jane Wyman,” she says.

As for what the future holds, a glint sparkles in Fonda’s sapphire-blue eyes before she teases,

“You will be seeing more of me. Let’s put it that way.”

 
Honors

• In 1981, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award.
• In 1994, the United Nations Population Fund made Fonda a Goodwill Ambassador.
• In 2004 Fonda was awarded the Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century award as one of Seven Who Change Their Worlds
• In 2007, Fonda was awarded an Honorary Palme d’Or by Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob for career achievement. Only three others had received such an award – Jeanne Moreau, Alain Resnais, and Gerard Oury.
• In December 2008, Fonda was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.
• In December 2009, Fonda was given the New York Women’s Agenda Lifetime Achievement Award.

 
 
 

  A Celebration of Women™

welcomes this authentic and transformed female powerhouse with open arms.

 

 

Brava Jane!