Second generation Hollywood royalty. Jane Fonda comes from a family of actors, but she quickly made a name for herself and became an icon in her own right.
Born in 1937 to Frances Ford Seymour and movie legend Henry Fonda, Jane became interested in acting as a teen after starring alongside her dad in a charity performance in Nebraska. After dropping out of Vassar College, she moved to Paris to study art, then returned to the U.S. and began studying acting in earnest with method pioneer Lee Strasberg.
Jane worked steadily on the stage in the late 1950s before making her film debut in 1960’s Tall Story. While the Golden Globe winner appeared in several films in that decade, her breakout role came in 1965’s Cat Ballou, in which she played a schoolteacher-turned-outlaw trying to protect her father’s ranch. The movie was nominated for five Oscars (and won one), but its lead actress was surprised that it was a hit.
“When we did Cat Ballou, neither [costar] Lee [Marvin] nor I thought it was going to be any good,” Jane told the Star Tribune in June 2019. “We made it on a shoestring and shot it very fast. Then Lee won an Oscar. So, you never really know. You just give it your best and see what happens.”
Jane earned her first Oscar nomination in 1970 for her work in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? before winning two years later for her turn as call girl Bree Daniels in Klute. The role is now remembered as one of her greatest performances, but Jane later revealed that she initially didn’t think she was right for the part.
“I was just beginning to understand feminism,” she explained during an interview with Criterion in 2019. “It wasn’t in my body, but it was becoming part of my thought process. I was trying to understand the women’s movement, which I had been resistant to for a long time. … I remember thinking, ‘Well, if I’m a feminist, I can’t play a prostitute.’”
As cinema fans know, however, she ultimately took the part, preparing for the role by spending time with real sex workers. She explained that her full feminist awakening didn’t come until later, but the early 1970s kicked off the activist streak that she’s been known for over the last 50 years.
After vocally opposing the Vietnam War, she traveled to Hanoi in 1972 to witness the damage herself. During her visit, she was photographed sitting on top of an anti-aircraft gun, leading to speculation that she condoned Vietnamese soldiers shooting down American planes. Critics, meanwhile, began calling her “Hanoi Jane.” The Emmy winner later said she would “regret” the picture until her “dying day,” but she has remained a vocal antiwar activist, speaking out against the Iraq War in 2005.
In her later years, Jane became known for her activism as much as her screen work. The Tony Award nominee moved to Washington, D.C. in 2019 so she could more easily stage protests about the climate crisis in front of the U.S. Capitol. She was arrested multiple times, with one image of her raising her hands in triumph while sticking her tongue out going viral.
“Why be a celebrity if you can’t leverage it for something that is this important?” she told The New York Times in 2019 of her protests, which were heavily covered by the media. “You are all here. So I think it’s working.”
Keep scrolling for a look back at Jane’s life in pictures:
Second generation Hollywood royalty. Jane Fonda comes from a family of actors, but she quickly made a name for herself and became an icon in her own right.
Born in 1937 to Frances Ford Seymour and movie legend Henry Fonda, Jane became interested in acting as a teen after starring alongside her dad in a charity performance in Nebraska. After dropping out of Vassar College, she moved to Paris to study art, then returned to the U.S. and began studying acting in earnest with method pioneer Lee Strasberg.
Jane worked steadily on the stage in the late 1950s before making her film debut in 1960’s Tall Story. While the Golden Globe winner appeared in several films in that decade, her breakout role came in 1965’s Cat Ballou, in which she played a schoolteacher-turned-outlaw trying to protect her father’s ranch. The movie was nominated for five Oscars (and won one), but its lead actress was surprised that it was a hit.
“When we did Cat Ballou, neither [costar] Lee [Marvin] nor I thought it was going to be any good,” Jane told the Star Tribune in June 2019. “We made it on a shoestring and shot it very fast. Then Lee won an Oscar. So, you never really know. You just give it your best and see what happens.”
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Jane earned her first Oscar nomination in 1970 for her work in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? before winning two years later for her turn as call girl Bree Daniels in Klute. The role is now remembered as one of her greatest performances, but Jane later revealed that she initially didn’t think she was right for the part.
“I was just beginning to understand feminism,” she explained during an interview with Criterion in 2019. “It wasn’t in my body, but it was becoming part of my thought process. I was trying to understand the women’s movement, which I had been resistant to for a long time. … I remember thinking, ‘Well, if I’m a feminist, I can’t play a prostitute.'”
As cinema fans know, however, she ultimately took the part, preparing for the role by spending time with real sex workers. She explained that her full feminist awakening didn’t come until later, but the early 1970s kicked off the activist streak that she’s been known for over the last 50 years.
After vocally opposing the Vietnam War, she traveled to Hanoi in 1972 to witness the damage herself. During her visit, she was photographed sitting on top of an anti-aircraft gun, leading to speculation that she condoned Vietnamese soldiers shooting down American planes. Critics, meanwhile, began calling her “Hanoi Jane.” The Emmy winner later said she would “regret” the picture until her “dying day,” but she has remained a vocal antiwar activist, speaking out against the Iraq War in 2005.
In her later years, Jane became known for her activism as much as her screen work. The Tony Award nominee moved to Washington, D.C. in 2019 so she could more easily stage protests about the climate crisis in front of the U.S. Capitol. She was arrested multiple times, with one image of her raising her hands in triumph while sticking her tongue out going viral.
“Why be a celebrity if you can’t leverage it for something that is this important?” she told The New York Times in 2019 of her protests, which were heavily covered by the media. “You are all here. So I think it’s working.”
Keep scrolling for a look back at Jane’s life in pictures:
Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock
1960
Jane made her big-screen debut in Tall Story alongside Anthony Perkins. She came from a family of actors, which, in addition to her father, included her brother Peter Fonda and niece Bridget Fonda.
Credit: Daily Sketch/Shutterstock
1965
The Joy House actress met her first husband, Roger Vadim, in 1963 and married him two years later. Two months before their wedding, Jane appeared in Cat Ballou, in what is widely considered to be her breakout role. The couple, who divorced in 1973, welcomed daughter Vanessa in 1968.
Credit: Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
1967
Jane starred in Barefoot in the Park — her first collaboration with Robert Redford — earning a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actress. In 2017, she joked that she was “always in love” with him during filming. “I fell in love every time, so if a day went by when he wouldn’t speak to me … there were days when he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was part of the script,” she recalled during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I always took it personally: ‘What if he doesn’t like me? I did something wrong.’”
Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock
1968
The New York City native starred as the titular sci-fi heroine in Vadim’s Barbarella, one of her most iconic roles.
Credit: Kypros/Shutterstock
1970
Jane was arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, on suspicion of drug trafficking after pills were discovered in her luggage at the airport. The activist has said the pills were vitamins, and the charges were later dropped. Her mugshot, however, lived on, showing the actress raising her fist in solidarity.
Credit: AP/Shutterstock
1972
The Julia star won her first Oscar for Klute. That same year, she traveled to Vietnam after vocally opposing the war.
Credit: Frank C Curtin/AP/Shutterstock
1973
Days after divorcing Vadim, Jane married her second husband, activist and author Tom Hayden. The duo, who split in 1988, welcomed son Troy Garity six months after their wedding. In 1982, they also unofficially adopted Mary Williams.
Credit: AP/Shutterstock
1979
Jane won her second Oscar for her portrayal of Sally Hyde in Coming Home.
Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock
1980
The Fun With Dick and Jane actress collaborated with Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin in 9 to 5, a comedy about three women who dream of getting revenge on their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss (played by Dabney Coleman).
Credit: ITV/Shutterstock
1981
Jane starred alongside her father, Henry, in the film adaptation of On Golden Pond. She scored a best supporting actress Oscar nod for the film, which won three Academy Awards — including best actor for Henry and best actress for Katharine Hepburn.
Credit: Reed Saxon/AP/Shutterstock
1982
The Agnes of God star released her first workout video, in what would become one of her most lucrative and iconic projects. She ultimately released more than 20 videos, five books and 13 audio programs.
Credit: Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch/Shutterstock
1984
Jane won an Emmy for her performance in the made-for-TV movie The Dollmaker.
Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock
1990
The My Life So Far author starred alongside Robert De Niro in Stanley & Iris, which was her last movie for 15 years.
Credit: AP/Shutterstock
1991
Jane married her third husband, CNN founder Ted Turner. The duo split in 2000 and finalized their divorce one year later.
Credit: Melissa Moseley/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/Shutterstock
2005
The prolific star returned to the big screen in Monster-in-Law alongside Jennifer Lopez. She also published her memoir, My Life So Far.
Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock
2007
Jane received the honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the fourth person to take home the trophy. That same year, she starred in Georgia Rule with Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman.
Credit: Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock
2009
The Butler star returned to Broadway for the first time since 1963, starring in the play 33 Variations and earning a Tony Award nomination in the process. That year she began a relationship with record producer Richard Perry, whom she dated until 2017.
Credit: Melissa Moseley/Netflix
2015
Jane reunited with Tomlin for the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie, which ran for seven seasons and earned its lead actresses multiple Emmy nominations.
Credit: Kerry Brown/Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock
2017
The 80 for Brady actress reunited with Redford for Our Souls at Night, marking their fourth collaboration.
Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/Shutterstock
2019
The philanthropist was arrested multiple times during her “Fire Drill Fridays” climate protests outside the U.S Capitol building.
Credit: Rich Polk/NBC
2021
Jane won the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes. In her acceptance speech, she called for a great embrace of diversity in Hollywood. “Stories, they really can change people,” she said. “But there’s a story we’ve been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry, a story about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out, a story about who’s offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made. So, let’s all of us, including all the groups that decide who gets hired and what gets made and who wins awards, let’s all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises and everyone’s story has a chance to be seen and heard.”
Credit: Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
2022
The Sunday in New York star revealed in September that she was starting chemotherapy after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “So, my dear friends, I have something personal I want to share. I’ve been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and have started chemo treatments,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “This is a very treatable cancer. 80% of people survive, so I feel very lucky.”
