All language subtitles for movie 223761.en

Tonight, Lux is visiting one of
Hollywood's most exciting new stars,

Jane Fonda.

Jane's been using Lux...
How long, Jane?

Ever since my first roles
in summer stock,

I could see that a star
just had to have

a really lovely complexion.

Might I assume that

you are a, uh,
very lovely lady?

That you may.

Well, will
you join our cause?

What cause?
Who are you?

The woman in the helmet is
Jane Fonda, the actress.

Actress Jane Fonda was arrested

today at the airport
in Cleveland.

The Justice Department said
it is attempting to determine

whether Ms. Fonda
had violated

sedition, treason
or other statutes.

Any healthy country,
like any healthy individual,

should be
in perpetual revolution,

perpetual change.

You just may be the
most talked about personality

in the country today.

There's a lot of, uh,
hostility towards you.

Ah! The winner is
Jane Fonda in Coming Home.

My first guest tonight
is a gal that I admire highly.

Funny thing how people who were
called radicals at the time

now are considered right-on.

You have to
have the courage to speak

about the changes
that are needed

and it includes challenging,
at the root,

the corporate power that has taken
over the economy of this country.

You turn around
and marry a billionaire.

How do you go
from one to the other

without completely losing
yourself somewhere in there?

Ow!

Sorry.

To drink or not to drink.

I think I'll drink.

The problem is
they only serve wine.

Oh, really? They're not doing...
They don't do champagne?

I-I don't drink champagne. I
don't drink wine. I drink vodka.

Well, maybe they can...

I'll have to bribe somebody.

You know the two
times that I won an Oscar,

I did my own hair and makeup.

You're kidding?

When I picked up
the Oscar for my dad...

it looked like the Lindbergh
baby was hidden in my hair.

It's, it's that hair there.

I mean, it was the '80s,
just to be fair to myself.

Okay, Fonda, keep your chin up.

It's Jane Fonda!

Ms. Fonda, that...

Yeah, could we have
one smile this way?

One smile?
Thank you.

- Has Vanity Fair
been published? - Yes.

-Just this month?
-Yes, and I'm on the cover.

Aw. Yeah, I wouldn't get
on the cover.

I never thought... I'd never
have thought that I would ever...

Were they Hollywood women?
Is that it?

-It was called the Year of the Woman...
-Was it Saoirse?

-Not even from Hollywood.
-It was.

Irish.

-Brie Larson?
-Yeah.

Oh, same old...
Helen Mirren?

Yes.

-They took me out and put you in.
-Yeah, they did.

They aced me out.

- It went from 21-year-old Saoirse...
- This is your fault.

...to 78-year-old me.

Yeah.

Well, that's no big deal.

After 53 years of friendship
and 11 films together,

you don't think I'm gonna start
to bullshit you now, do you?

-You of all people?
-No, I don't!

I wouldn't deserve that.

That's right.
You don't deserve it.

You deserve me to call
a spade a spade,

which is why I dragged
my ass here from LA.

Look, Brenda,
if it's about scene 21,

where you're described
as "ugly,"

"feeble," uh, "a pale shadow
of your former beauty."

Please, realize
that's just poetic license.

You still preserve intact.

You have to.

That mystery, that allure you had
when you first became a diva.

When you were
little lady Jane Fonda,

up on Tigertail Road...

did you dream about being an actress?
Did you wanna be?

Did I want to be an actress? No, not
until I was, uh, well into my 20s.

-I-I didn't, um... -Really?
'Cause you were so...

-I think when you grow up
in the industry... -Mm-hmm.

...and you see, uh,
what the people are

-really like behind their masks...
-Mm-hm.

...you know, you're not too
encouraged to become an actor.

I grew up in the shadow

of a national monument.

Wait a minute, buddy.
You just done some jackassin'.

You can't shut up now.

The handbill said
they need 800 pickers,

you laugh and say
they don't.

Which one's the liar?

My dad, his values,

you know, solid American...

Midwestern values:

fairness, equality, justice.

Stand up for the underdog,
and that's why he gravitated

to characters like Tom Joad
in Grapes of Wrath,

and The Ox-Bow Incident, which
was about a lynching and racism.

12 Angry Men , I mean,

without him ever saying so,
I knew that these movies

expressed what he could
never say verbally.

He was the face
of the America that...

people wanted to believe in.

I was Henry Fonda's daughter,
which, of course, meant

that I was polite,
I was nice...

...I was
the girl next door.

All the things
that I didn't feel I was.

I didn't like my body.
I didn't like myself. I...

I felt shy.

We looked like
the American Dream.

Rich, beautiful,

close...

but a lot of it
was simply myth.

This is the summer

when I was 11.

It was staged for some magazine,
I don't remember which one.

Then there's my brother,
Peter, and my mother.

She had been in and out
of institutions by that time,

and when I look at her face, I can
see the anxiety and the stress,

and it makes me
very, very sad.

I didn't know why,
but I had an aversion to her.

My team is the winning team,
my team is the man,

my dad.

And you can tell he is not
present at all.

He was having an affair
with a far younger woman.

Family picnic.

To me, that is a very...

sad picture.

It says it all.

I was alone
a lot growing up.

I spent all my time
roaming the hills.

I wanted to be Tonto.

In those days, when you
really became somebody,

it meant that you were...
independent,

you didn't need anybody.

But then I'd look
into the windows of houses

where people were sitting
at the table...

and I remember, it would bring
up a feeling of longing in me.

And I figured,
whatever it is that creates

that thing that I'm
looking at, that warm...

glow of light,
people laughing and talking,

that will never be mine.

Henry Fonda,

we name you
Stage Father of 1952.

Here is your medal and my
heartiest congratulations.

Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Austin.

I feel very honored.
I just hope that

my Jane and Peter
are gonna be properly impressed.

He was a hero
to so many people.

But...

these kind of men
aren't always good fathers.

It's hard to be both.

I wanted to please dad.

Who would you like me to be?
I'll do whatever you want,

'cause I want you
to love me.

Peter was the opposite.

If he was scared,
he'd cried.

If he was angry with dad,
he'd show it.

And it was
really hard on Peter.

He had it way harder than me.

It's more difficult for
Jane than it is for me, actually.

You see, it's not that he wasn't
or isn't a loving person at all.

He just... has no character with a
script that says, "Henry Fonda:

Fonda says, 'I love you son,'" and
he would be able to handle it.

Without that script,
he's got nothing to do.

I mean, he has to have the mask
in order to express.

Jane has no way to attach
herself to Henry.

She's lost out there
as his daughter.

I was 20, maybe 21,

still living
at my father's house

on the beach in Malibu.

My stepmother had
given me an ultimatum:

"Come fall, you have to move
out of the house."

What was I gonna do?

A quarter-mile down the beach
was Lee Strasberg's house.

He was the great acting coach.

He taught people like Paul Newman and James
Dean, and, of course, Marilyn Monroe.

I walked down the beach,

took off my high-heeled shoes
to walk in the sand.

I knocked on the back door after
having put my shoes back on.

He let me in.

He later said,

"She seemed to be the most
boring, conventional girl...

"except when I looked
into her eyes,

there was a lot hidden."

And he took me
into his class.

Lee taught us
to... dive deep

into your own psyche,

private moments,
sensory memories,

to bring a deeper life
to your character.

I was so scared.

I sat in the back.

I would've been happy if I never
ended up performing in that class.

Eventually, after
about two months,

Lee said, "Okay.

"You know, tomorrow
you're gonna do it."

The class was
fuller than usual.

I think they wanted
to come see

Henry Fonda's daughter
fall on her face.

And then I remember
when I was through,

Lee was silent
for a long time.

And then he said, "You know, I see
a lot of people come through here.

You have real talent."

I swear...

it was like someone had opened the
top of my head and birds flew out.

Everyone off the steps.

Diane?

I can't stand it!

The first time you really

discover something you love,
organically love to do,

you go to sleep loving it,

and you wake up and you love it,

and you don't have to think
about it,

and you don't mind
staying home alone at night

because you've got this thing
that you really love to do.

Jane
Fonda decided to follow

the well-known path trod
by her distinguished father,

actor Henry Fonda.

Jane worked as
a photographer's model

to earn a living
while she mastered the art.

-Hello, Jane.
-Hello, Charlie.

I think that we caught you just
moving into this apartment.

You certainly did.

Jane, do you think
it's important for a girl

starting out to be
on her own,

to have her own apartment
like this?

Well, I think, uh...

it helps, I think,
to be away from the family,

particularly for me.

You know, if a child
and the parent

work in the same business,

it's uh, you feel more
independent, you know.

I feel...

I don't have to always be explaining
what I'm doing and everything like that.

-Uh, you're...
- I hope my father's not listening to this.

He probably is.

I had this
instantaneous career.

I was doing plays
on Broadway.

I was making movies
in Hollywood.

I was nominated for a Tony and won the
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award

for the most promising actress
of the year for drama.

Well, it says outside that... that
Brad and I are starring in the show,

you know, and that's one of the
reasons that people are coming.

But I don't feel...

I don't feel that I can...

quite live up to that,
you know?

It's a funny feeling.

During
that period of time,

I was asked to audition,
for Kazan,

for the female lead in Splendor in the
Grass that Natalie Wood ended up doing.

It was in a theater, and Kazan

called me down to the footlights

and... and he was standing below
and he looked up at me,

and he said,
"Are you ambitious?"

And I said, "No!"

Talk about self-betrayal.

I just wanted to be okay.

I wanted to be a good girl.

A good girl

is not an ambitious person.

I got hired for a whole
string of girl next door,

ingénues,
and I became the actor

that would get the light,
romantic comedies

that would start as plays on Broadway
and then they'd be made into films.

She's already
made him a sissy.

Oh man, that
do it every time.

-Mm-hmm. -She'll be back
tomorrow, at the latest.

Well, let 'em.

George, will you please
get my little blue zipper bag?

Please?

You know what
I had in mind?

- George?
- Hong Kong.

All right!
I'll get it myself!

-Huh? -I'll go out
and get it myself!

You know,
and I was, okay at it.

I was all right.

Oh, ow!

I knew how to talk
kind of high

and blink my eyes and...

Whoa.

This is the Plaza Hotel, please.

Plaza. Corie, it's the Plaza.

Wait a minute,
I'm not finished.

Corie, the man is waiting,
waiting.

Give him a big tip.

Paul, tell me you're not
sorry we got married.

After 40 minutes? Let's give
it a couple of hours first.

Paul, if the honeymoon doesn't
work out, let's not get divorced,

let's kill each other.

Let's have one
of the maids do it.

I hear the service here
is wonderful.

Sometimes you just find
yourself in sync,

and that happened from the
very beginning with Jane.

There was just something that,

that naturally developed
between us.

There was a chemistry
that just was there,

and it was also fun.

She saw the humor in things,

but at the same time,

she shared her insecurities
and her doubts.

In our friendship, we've been
very honest with each other

about our angers,
our frustrations.

And, at a certain point, Jane
just had an instinct that said,

"Down deep,
there's something missing."

A lot of other
people were defining me,

all of them men.

I never felt real.

I just thought, "I've got to get
out from under my father's shadow.

"Maybe if I go to France
during the new wave period,

"I will...

find who I really am."

I was always in search of some per...
somebody that was real in there.

One night, when I
first arrived in Paris,

I was at Maxim's
with a group of actors,

and Roger Vadim walked in.

I knew that
he had a reputation.

He had been married to Brigitte Bardot and
he'd had a child with Catherine Deneuve.

He had already directed
And God Created Woman.

He was a rock star.

He walked in,
and I immediately felt

endangered.

He felt predatory,

but charming,

sexy.

I promised myself,
"I will never make a movie

with Roger Vadim."

I was making the
Rene Clement movie

called Les Felins .

Why are you looking
at me like that?

Am I attractive to you?

I had just done a scene

where I'm in a teddy, you know,
a little underwear,

and, uh, I... I got a...

message that Vadim was in the canteen
and... and wanted to see me.

I realized that I was
excited to see him.

I threw on my trench coat,

and as I ran
into the canteen,

the trench coat blew open.

And that night,
we went back to my hotel.

He didn't speak very good English.

Maybe if he had,
I'd never have married him.

You know,
Vadim's so charismatic,

so utterly seductive
and charming.

You walked down the
Champs-Élysées with Vadim,

it was like walking down the
street with Robert Redford.

I mean,
people would like...

They'd freak and ask for
his autograph, and...

Our life together was heady
and, um, slightly hedonistic.

But then there was this
old shoe quality to him,

it was this
comfortable part of him.

Nathalie!

He'd cross town to see
his daughter every day.

Aww.

Oh.

Jane came into
my life when I was three.

She looked very young,
I remember that.

Younger than she was.

I would see
my biological mother rarely.

And Jane was always there.

And so I became
really close to her.

She became my surrogate mother,
basically,

and the person who...
who raised me.

We moved into a farmhouse
that I bought outside of Paris.

There was something
so appealing to me

about putting down roots.

I saw myself

being married
and having a family

and living in France.

Well,

Vadim was
so full of contradictions.

There were a lot of issues
that I just chose not to see.

I didn't know what compulsive
gambling was or alcoholism.

If I would complain,
he would call me bourgeois.

Oh my God... forbid that you would
ever be worried about money

or complain about money
or complain about

extramarital affairs
or anything like that.

When she finds an
interest, she's focused on it.

At that point, that interest
was Vadim, so...

she became what Vadim wanted.

Does he know
you that well, Jane?

I think he, he knows me
better than I know me.

Actresses are
usually quite... dumb.

We're really quite stupid about
what we think we can do well.

And it's the director
that comes along

and makes us use muscles
we've never used before.

Vadim...
does that all the time.

I would say, "I can't do that,
I... I can't play that scene."

And he'd make me do it,
and they'd be the good scenes.

Here I was, trying
to not be defined by men,

ended up with a man
who was the ultimate

definer of femininity.

That's where I was at that time.

I wanted someone to mold me.

I wanted him...

to help me become a woman.

Dino De Laurentiis sent me the very famous
French comic book called, Barbarella.

He wanted to make a movie,
and would I play Barbarella.

Now, I knew that Bardot had turned it
down, Sophia Loren had turned it down,

and I didn't want to do it.

I mean,
I look at these pictures,

I didn't identify
with Barbarella.

Well, Vadim was, I think,

probably the number one science
fiction aficionado in the world.

So, when you have a science
fiction story that's about sex...

there was no way I was not gonna do this
movie, and he was going to direct it.

Vadim wanted the film to open
with a space strip tease.

He took the set

and turned it so that

the opening of the set was facing
the ceiling of the sound stage.

Then he put a very thick
pane of glass over it,

and then I laid on top
of the glass

like I was floating in space.

And then I had
to be naked.

I was drunk. I drank
so much vodka to do that.

It was so terrifying for me.

And then the next morning,
we hear that a bat

had flown...

between me and the camera

that was hanging
from the ceiling.

and spoiled the take
and we had to do it again.

Oh, God.

So the take that actually
got used,

I was not only drunk,
I was hungover, too.

Are you typical
of Earth women?

I'm about average.

When I look at the movie
now, I thoroughly enjoy it.

I mean,
I think it's just a camp

romp, really. I don't think
it's particularly sexy.

I wasn't a questioner.

Superficial can
come pretty easy to me.

I mean, it's more convenient.

You know, I spent...

quite a few decades
not asking too many questions.

There was a time when

I believed so strongly

that if American soldiers
were fighting somewhere,

we had to be
on the side of the angels.

It was inconceivable to me
that it could be otherwise.

My father had fought
in the Second World War.

He was so proud of it,
I understood that.

I mean, I was
Miss Army Recruiter in 1959.

I remember in 1964,

Vadim and I were
in St. Tropez.

He picked up the paper,
and the headlines

were talking about how Congress had
passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

Vadim erupted,

my non-political husband.

"What are they doing? There is
no way they can win that war."

"Your Congress
is out of its mind."

And I'm thinking, "Sour grapes.
Just 'cause you guys didn't win,

the French, when you fought
the Vietnamese." You know?

That was how...
little I knew.

I had grown very close
to Simone Signoret.

She was one of the top
French movie stars.

And she had become
an activist.

Artists, writers,
poets, philosophers

were at the forefront
of activism.

Simone de Beauvoir,

Jean Paul Sartre.

I didn't really move
in those circles

with the exception
of Simone Signoret.

She kind of...

opened the door
a crack for me.

But, you know,
I remember thinking,

"I'm not as smart
as she thinks I am."

1968.

I was pregnant.

I think that
when a woman is pregnant,

more than ever,
she's like a sponge.

Very attuned to and receptive to
what's in the ether.

Not just around her,
but in the world.

I'm watching on television
the Tet Offensive.

I'm looking at
newsreel from Chicago.

We are going to gather here

by any means necessary.

The demonstrations,
the beatings, the bloodiness.

I thought of Simone.

I drove to her farmhouse

out in the country.

And I remember, she opened
the door and she said,

"I've been waiting for you."

She said, "I knew you'd come
to talk about the war."

Simone explained
to me that,

that the Vietnamese had been
fighting for thousands of years,

against the Mongols,
against China.

They had always won.

For America to fight a war

thousands and thousands
of miles away,

in a country
that they didn't understand,

against a people who...

wanted, above all else,
independence.

There was no way
that we could win.

You know,
it's funny, suddenly,

I felt, more than I ever had,

American.

It seems
completely contradictory,

you know, in a few years,

people that didn't like me
were saying,

"Go back to Hanoi,"
and all that.

But I felt, "No, no, no,
this is...

"We've taken a wrong path.

"I want to be with my people,
in my country,

"and try to make this right."

I really, I wanted my life
to have meaning.

But I was married,
and I was pregnant, and...

Oh my gosh.
I don't know what to do.

I said,
I just don't know what to do.

She realized that

there was more to life than just
being a housewife, actress.

And Vadim,
although progressive,

getting involved in politics, and really
getting involved, was not his thing.

Vanessa was born...

and it was a very, very,
very traumatic birth.

They used forceps,
and they tore me.

I hemorrhaged a lot.

I was suffering
from postpartum depression.

My milk didn't come...

That bond that's supposed
to happen, um,

it just didn't.

I felt like I was
the bad mother,

and I was terrified.

It surprised me,
this feeling of fear.

And, you know, later on, as I
look back on it, I know why.

It was because...

It's hard to talk about. Um...

I always saw my mother
as a victim.

Women equals victim.

"I am a woman,

I am gonna be damaged,
I am gonna be crushed."

My mother was
a very complicated woman,

very, very beautiful woman,

but she always
seemed sick.

We'd sit in the living room,
and she'd hold my hand,

and her hand would be
trembling like this.

And...

I didn't want her to feel bad so I
would make my hand tremble, too.

I mean, it was...
it was hard to figure out

what was happening with her.

Poor mom.

I think my father was not the person
she ever should have married.

He was not kind to her.

My father went to Broadway
to do Mr. Roberts.

And so we moved
to Connecticut.

My mother... that was
where her mental health

was really deteriorating.

I didn't know it
at the time,

but the sister
of the stage manager

was seven years
older than me,

and my father had fallen
in love with her.

It was a difficult time
for my mother, obviously.

I remember sitting
at dinner...

We ate Spam,

not all the time,

but occasionally, it would be
canned fruit and Spam.

Very weird.

And sitting at the table,

I looked down
and my mother was...

there were tears
pouring down her face

onto her dinner plate.

And my grandmother was here, and my
brother... and no one said a word.

And I remember,
one afternoon her

being taken to a hospital.

The last time she came home,

she has convinced the people
at the institution

that she was getting well
and they let her come home,

with a nurse accompanying her.

My brother and I had been
upstairs playing jacks.

Grandma called for us
to come down,

and I wouldn't go.

I said to Peter,
"You go and I'll let you win,

if you go down, I'm not going."

I never saw her again.

That was the day she snuck
a razor out of the house,

and then killed herself.

I came home
from school one day,

my father and my grandmother
were sitting in the living room,

and they sat me down,
and they said,

"Your mother
died of a heart attack."

I could hear Peter crying.

And I kept thinking, "Why
can't I cry?" I never cried.

I never cried,
I sat on the edge of my bed

thinking,
"What's the matter with me?"

And people would say,

"God, Jane
isn't she amazing?

"She's so strong."

So it was like approbation
for keeping it all in.

And that became
my modus operandi.

Um...

it was very hard for me to
ever be able to kinda do away

with that.
It took a long, long time.

Um...

Did you
notice, uh, or observe

how your father reacted
to your mother's death?

Well, dad came out
and he dropped the news,

and then went back to New York
and did his play.

Um...

that was dad.

The show must go on.

My father took me
to Union Station,

with my suitcase,

and put me on the train
to boarding school.

He was newly married.

He was in a play
on Broadway, and...

making films in the summer.
I mean, it was obvious

that Peter and I couldn't
continue living at home with him.

Nobody had ever talked to us about
what had happened with my mother.

I found out
because of a movie magazine.

And it said, "Henry Fonda's
ex-wife, Frances de Villers Fonda,

"cut her throat with a razor
at the Riggs Institute," and...

It was an awkward situation
on a lot of different levels.

And, to my dad, boarding
school was getting us

into a safe place,

and it was also getting us
out of his hair.

It was like a haven.

It was a... it was the steady thing in
my life. It was the core of my life.

I became very aware

of the fact that
I was really different,

not just because
my father was famous.

We just lived differently.

There was no...
continuity.

Susan was his third wife,

he would have two more
after that.

I didn't have a community
of friends

that I had gone to school with
before I came here.

My friends were the friends
that I made here.

I loved it.

I loved biology.

I also loved history.

I loved the Roman
and Greek history.

That's how I got into bulimia,

learning about how the Romans would
gorge themselves and then...

I had a roommate,

Carol Bentley.

Carol taught me to do this.

And of course...

you know, we didn't realize...

what we were starting,
we didn't realize how...

how dangerous it was,
and how addictive,

and how it would affect
so much of our lives.

But it's... it started here.

You never told anybody
that you were...

doing this.

I thought it was just
her and me and the Romans.

It never occurred to me
that anybody else did it.

Mothers are often blamed
for that, but for me,

it was... it was my dad.

I made him ashamed.

He thought I was fat...

because I didn't look
the way he wanted me to look.

I knew that
he didn't want me around,

or that I embarrassed him,

and, I mean,
he told people that.

I heard my father say things
about my body

that has twisted my life
in deep ways ever since.

And, by the way, most of his wives
suffered from eating disorders,

including my mother.

So the shadow
of my mother's suicide,

which happened a year
before I went to Emma Willard,

was never far away.

I'm gonna get off
this merry-go-round.

I'm so sick
of the whole stinkin' thing.

What thing?

Life.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was the
first time I had ever made a movie that...

was about something.

It's a metaphor, in a way,

for...

American society, greed.

And the desperation
of people who don't

have money and privilege.

During the Depression,

people would go
to these dance marathons

to try to win
all kinds of prizes.

And they would dance
without stopping for weeks.

These wonderful
kids deserve your cheers

because each one of them

is fighting down pain,
exhaustion, weariness,

struggling to keep going,
battling to win.

And isn't that the American way?

Before
we started shooting,

Sydney Pollack called me.

I didn't know who he was.

He'd made, maybe,
one other movie.

And I'll never forget it, he said, "You
know, what do you think of the script?

"Tell me what
you think we've left out.

"Let me know if you think
there's something important."

Well, I mean, no director had...
including my husband,

who directed me
in several movies...

had ever...
talked to me that way,

asked my opinion
about things that were profound.

I always had
this sense that she was...

a serious actress

buried inside this glamour-puss.

Work, work, work!

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
was a much darker film,

and asked her to go to a
different place in herself.

And she was great
in the role.

There's not a shred of vanity
in the performance.

Syndey made me feel seen,

and of worth.

And so I thought,
"Yeah, I'm gonna go there."

I threw myself
into the character

the way I never had before.

I lived at the studio.

I looked at paintings
and pictures of crazy people.

I wrapped myself
in a cocoon of darkness.

I had a... six-month-old
child and a husband.

But I just didn't have the
technique yet where I could go

as far down the dark hole
as I possibly could,

and be a wife and mother.

I had to stay
in the dark hole.

The presence of my mother
was with me.

I had to get myself
to a point

where I really felt...
"Why go on?

There's absolutely no point."

Now?

Now.

Then, something shifted.

My wig from They Shoot Horses
comes off,

I've got this long,
still-Barbarella-esque hair,

and I just thought,
"This is not me anymore."

I had my first hair epiphany.

Someone said my hair
needed its own agent.

And I went to Vadim's barber,
Paul McGregor,

who had a salon
in Greenwich Village,

and I said,
"Do something.

Cut if off."

And he gave me what has become
known as the Klute hairdo.

I was very conflicted about whether it
was a good idea to be playing a hooker.

Before we started shooting,

I came to New York and spent a
week with call girls and madams,

really in the bowels
of that dark world.

There was a hardness

to them that was
painful to watch.

Not one pimp looked
at me twice,

didn't even wink at me.

And what that said to me was, it
played right to my insecurities,

"They know...

I'm just an upper-class,
privileged pretender."

And that's what motivated me
to say to Alan Pakula,

"I just... I don't... I don't know
if I can play this character.

And you should hire
Faye Dunaway."

She came up to me and
she said, "Alan, I want out.

I don't know what I'm doing."

And "I just think
I'm wrong for this.

I think it's not gonna work."

Get somebody else."

And I said,
"I'm not letting you out."

There was no way I would have
done that picture without Jane.

Jane is a fascinating
combination

of a woman
who has great courage,

great strength,
and at the same time,

had been used to being... like maybe
attracted to being controlled

by somebody else.

And I thought, where Jane
was in her life then,

in a very transition time,
was absolutely right

for this character of a woman
who's trying to change her life.

I brought something
different to Klute

than I had before.

She was wounded.

There was no ability
to trust anymore,

that was what was
so hard for her.

Once I began to kind of
marinate in that feeling,

I could, um...
then I could play her.

What's the difference
between going out on a call

as a model or as an actress
or as a call girl?

You're successful as a call
girl, you're not suc...

Because when you're a call girl,
you control it, that's why.

I said to Alan, "Can we shoot
all those psychiatrist's scenes

"at the very, very end...

when I've internalized her
the most completely?"

Nothing was written.

I hadn't prepared anything
in particular.

I just wanted to be present
in the moment,

and let whatever happened
happen.

I just started improvising.

And for an hour...

For an hour, I'm the best
actress in the world

and the best fuck
in the world, and...

you don't have
to feel anything,

you don't have
to care about anything,

you don't have
to like anybody...

That came from
a new place in me.

That's when I realized
that anyone can change

and become fierce.

Jane Fonda, you've been
taking your public by surprise recently.

Instead of being pictured on the beaches
of St. Tropez, you've been pictured

invading Army camps
and getting yourself arrested.

From where I am, it looks
like a different Jane Fonda.

Oh, I think you're right.
I think I am different.

Roger Vadim is French,
a director of motion pictures,

and the husband
of Jane Fonda.

Ms. Fonda is quite active
in the peace movement,

the civil rights field, efforts
to aid Mexican-Americans,

American-Indians,
and dissident soldiers.

Vadim says, "Ms. Fonda is
happy, very happy.

"But said she decided,"
as he put it,

"To take on the sins of her country,
she has lost her sense of humor."

As a case in point,

he reported that one day,
recently, he called her

"Jane of Arc."

He says,
she didn't laugh at all.

I knew that I was
gonna have to leave Vadim,

and that whole
hedonistic relationship.

And I think it was
deeply confusing for him

to have a wife that he
cared for leave him...

not for another man,
but for an idea.

She tends to
move on from things.

You know, you don't really realize how
you affect people when you do that.

It's like, "Oh, okay,
now I'm done with this,

therefore I'm gonna make new friends,
and it's gonna be a new life."

You know,
and we got left behind.

I came back from France

and I moved
into my father's house.

And I began to...
become an activist.

And my father could look
from the upstairs window

down onto the courtyard
and see

the leadership of the Black
Panther Party going in and out,

and he said to me,
"If I find out

you are a Communist,
I'm gonna turn you in!"

And I remember running to my room,
I was still living with him,

and just pulling the covers
over my head.

It came out of a fear,
for me

I understand that now,
but it was so hurtful then.

If you were good young people,
you would be fitting yourself

into a scenario that has
been laid out for all of us,

a nice, set scenario to fit us
into the American way of life.

And it says that you
must conduct yourselves

in the manner that meets the approval
and standards of the people in power.

It's called
making it on your own.

There was so much
catching up to do about Vietnam

and about Native Americans

and about what was happening
to black people,

the Black Panthers.

How could I have reached
the age of 32

in such ignorance?

I felt so guilty,

and I just felt like
I had to, kind of,

all of a sudden become
an overnight...

righteous activist.

All right!

It's
generally acknowledged that

new people who join the movement
become zealots.

You know, they're
like converts, you know.

And I think
that Jane is convinced

that she is going to stop
the war in Vietnam,

and that she knows
what is best

and how to do it.

I think people felt

very suspicious
about my motives.

I would've
if I'd been somebody else.

"You are a rich movie star.
Why do you care? Why are you...

"involving yourself in this?

And how can I be sure
that you're for real?"

I didn't quite know
what I was doing,

or how to make
proper use of my celebrity.

So much had happened
so quickly.

I was alternately
bulimic and anorexic.

I would, maybe, eat one soft-boiled
egg and spinach a day, period.

I took Dexedrine,
which is speed.

So I was really speedy,

and I was starving,

along with, like,
getting all of this new...

information coming in
at a very rapid pace.

We here today, together with the
multitudes across the country

that are joined together
in massive protest,

are showing to Richard Nixon
that his advisers...

that the silent majority
is dead.

I mean,
I'm high-strung anyway,

but me on Dexedrine,
without eating

and feeling like I have to say
everything all at once, it's like...

I'm amazed that anybody
could receive what I was saying.

It was like,
"Wow, who is this woman?"

The winner is Jane Fonda
for Klute.

My head was
not in Hollywood.

I didn't think very much
about my career anymore.

It wasn't where I was at.

I wasn't some privileged person
kind of doling out money

and then going about my life.

It was full-time,
on-the-ground activism.

I was on the road
all the time.

I was identified with
different movements,

and my life
was very complicated

and very, very busy,
and intense.

I do have a tendency
to kind of go full bore,

200 percent,
for better or worse.

It felt like a betrayal
to Vanessa.

One night, I laid her on a towel on
the floor to change her diapers,

and she looked very deep
into my eyes,

and I could tell that she
was saying, "Where are you?

"Where are you?

"Why don't you show up?"

That's what I felt.

And I had to look away.

Isn't that awful?

I was kinda in over my head.

I desperately
needed structure,

I desperately
needed guidance,

and, uh,

I had always turned
to men for that.

We must be
unified, must be invincible,

must be strong,
must find solidarity,

must struggle,
must have a program,

and must be the rock on which this
attempt to impose fascism is shattered.

I was downtown
at some theater,

and this guy shows up...
Tom Hayden.

We connected
a little bit,

and, uh, I could tell

that something
was going on between us.

He was a movement hero.

I was extremely intimidated.

I thought, "Oh, there's
just something so impish."

He had a twinkle in his eye.

He put his hand on my knee,

and I felt this electric shock
go through my body,

and I came home, and I said... I had a
roommate at the time, Ruby, and I said to her,

"I think that I've met the man
that I'm gonna marry next."

He had been part of the
formation of the New Left.

He had been
one of the Chicago 7.

He was cofounder of SDS.

I was already an activist
when Tom came along.

But he had such experience,
he knew

how to help me
go down that path,

better and smarter and deeper.

I had been in the peace
movement for a long time.

But the first
SDS national demonstration,

the largest
in American history,

was in 1965.

It was 25,000 people, that would
grow by 20-fold in just a few years,

and Jane was involved
in all of that.

She had a role in helping with
the, uh, GI coffee houses

to share information with the
soldiers about their options.

"Where exactly is Vietnam? What
exactly could happen to me?"

That sort of thing
was very real.

She suggested
that she hadn't been thinking,

and that her recommendation
was to think.

And they did.

It spread to campuses,

where, eventually, many thousands
of young men resisted.

I was drawn
by her transformation

from a Hollywood star
to a political star.

It's not often that a movie
star also gets involved in anything

that might irritate people, and my next
guest has certainly taken that chance

and done it to the hilt.

She, as I'm sure you know, recently
returned from a trip to North Vietnam.

Will you welcome, please,
Jane Fonda.

You really got pasted this time
by the press and others

when you came back,
as you obviously know.

Would you have done
anything differently

if you had it to do
over again?

It's a surreal
thing to live through...

what I experienced in the two weeks
that I was in North Vietnam.

Flying from Nam Pen
to Hanoi,

I look out the window,
and I can see

American planes bombing.

Nixon was bringing
ground troops home,

and he was saying
that he was ending the war,

when, in fact,
it wasn't ending.

It was escalating in terms
of bombing of North Vietnam.

We began to get communiqués
saying, this is really serious.

It looks like American planes
are targeting

the dikes of North Vietnam
right before the monsoon season.

If the dikes are weakened
and give way,

a million people could drown
or die from starvation.

I'm always interested, first, in the mechanics
of how somebody gets to North Vietnam.

A lot of people say, well, you
know, "How come you got to go,

and how do you feel that you have
a right to speak about the war?"

And I have no more right
than anyone else, you know?

Two years ago, I didn't even
know where Vietnam was.

Why on earth would she conceive
of the idea of going alone...

to Hanoi?

Would she have gone to Berlin

during the middle
of the Anschluss?

She was, maybe, as some would say,
searching for something in herself,

testing herself.
"How brave am I?

Am I not just a flibbertigibbet
on the screen?"

We might need psychiatry to help
us with the answer to this.

I'm not sure.

It's either brave or foolish,
and I think it partook of both.

Were you
trying to get the soldiers

to disobey
their orders?

No, I-I...

I knew that you cannot
ask a soldier to disobey orders.

You're not the one that pays
the consequences.

Well, you said,
this is direct quotes,

"I beg you to consider
what you are doing.

"The hospitals are filled with
babies and women and old people.

Can you justify
what you are doing?"

Doesn't that sound like you're asking
them to stop what they're doing?

I'm asking them to consider it.

And then, in your
trip, you were photographed

behind an aerial gun
of the, uh, North Vietnamese,

if not the Vietcong, I'm not sure.
That seemed a bit tactless.

What were you doing
behind an enemy gun?

I didn't think, at the time, about
how it would be, uh, received.

And I can understand why people
were very confused by that.

The soldiers received me there
and sang me a song.

It was very moving to me because they
were expressing the same sentiments

that American GIs
expressed to me.

And I was applauding
their song

and this was what was shown
on American television.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I wondered
how you got there.

I'm... I'm naive
and I make mistakes, but...

it was my fault
that I sat there.

The image of Jane Fonda,

Barbarella,

Henry Fonda's daughter

sitting on an enemy aircraft gun
was a betrayal.

It was like I was thumbing
my nose at the military

and at... at the country

that gave me privilege.

As I've said many times, I will
go to my grave regretting that.

I wasn't there. I
might have stopped it.

I would not have advised it,
but you can't stop the media.

And so you took this picture
and of course it went viral.

I thought it was a problem
of the celebrity spotlight,

when you're used by the media,
and blown up by the media,

you will make a mistake
in the media.

The Justice Department
said it is attempting to determine

whether Ms. Fonda
had violated

sedition, treason
or other statutes.

Distrust
movie actors with causes.

They live in so rarefied
an atmosphere of celebrity

that they have no conception of the
ambiguity of right and wrong in real life.

They needed
a very visible person

who represented
the peace movement

to do something
really terrible,

and that was me.

The petition we're circulating
asks the Justice Department

to prosecute Jane Fonda to the
fullest extent of the law

for giving aid and comfort
to the enemy.

Jane Fonda's
an outrageous liar.

She's a hypocrite and a liar.

She's the most despicable
woman in the United States.

There are other people in
films, too, that we don't ask

for advice, such as
Mickey Mouse or Lassie.

I don't think she should've
done the things that she's done

and said about our country and come
back and lived in the country.

I don't care
if she's a tender, young female,

a famous movie star,
that is treason.

It's under active investigation.

They have not yet made
a decision as to whether

to prosecute or not prosecute.

And of course,
they found nothing,

so the charges of treason
have been dropped.

And they don't understand that I... I
came back here because I love America.

The democratic ideals upon
which our country is founded

is... are being betrayed.

- We have an obligation to resist this.
- I'm sorry, Jane.

I'm disturbed by your difference
between your content and your style.

I've always liked
Jane, and I always admired

her guts,
but I worried about her.

She was, to use the mildest
possible word, hated.

I mean, you had people
in legislatures arguing

that she should have her tongue cut out
and that she should be hung and so on.

I think, also, part of it was
that she was very effective.

So, she had to be quickly stereotyped
and... and gotten rid of.

It was McCarthyism
recycled under Nixon,

and they just tried to smear
her reputation over and over.

They would have killed her
if they could.

Nixon, of course, had already
advocated bombing the dikes.

One reason he did not

is that Jane Fonda was brave
enough to stand on those dikes

and denounce
what would happen

to hundred of thousands of
peasants if the dikes were bombed.

She was willing to be
attacked over that.

I consider
Jane Fonda one of the...

the most courageous women of our time,
probably the most courageous...

--...she made a
conversion from a life that was so sterile

and easy to live
into a life that's filled

with harassment and ridicule
and requires real courage.

I'm proud of
most of what I did,

and I'm very sorry
for some of what I did.

In Hanoi, I had met a number
of POWs, and we talked,

about the World Series, primarily,
and about some of their experiences.

But when the POWs
came home,

certain POWs were handpicked
to travel around the country

talking about torture.

If Ms. Fonda thinks
for a minute

that any of the people that she
saw were able to speak freely,

she's got
another thing coming.

I think coerced
is a very mild word.

I'd use the word tortured,
initially.

I think they're lying, and I think
they're not only going to have to live

with the fact that they were
carrying out acts of murder

for the rest of their lives, they're
also going to have to live with the fact

that they're lying
on their consciousness...

Torture of POWs had ended

in North Vietnam in 1969.

Three years before I went there.

This court finds you guilty

of the crime of high treason
against the United States.

Jane gave as good as she
got when she was... attacked.

But Jane had a way of making
things worse for herself.

Never before
in the history of warfare

have prisoners of war come back
looking like football players.

Never in the history of war have
men come back and been able

to come off planes, saluting
smartly and hug their wives.

And we should try to help
each other understand

why these men
are being used this way.

Not do ourselves and them the
disservice of making them into heroes.

Why not the legless and armless
vets who have come back to welfare?

Why not all those men who died
over there on the ground...

Why aren't they heroes?

You're a gutless
little traitor!

I was so angry that Nixon

used freeing the POWS
and bringing them home

as a justification

for continuing the war and
carpet-bombing North Vietnam.

I have no idea what it
must be like to be a POW.

I do know that they were used
by the government.

It was a very...
tumultuous and polarized time.

There was a lot of
anger and blame,

and for myself, I really,
I didn't know

always how to channel
my anger in constructive ways.

I killed a lot of people, and I
live with a lot of nightmares!

And then I got shot
in this country's war.

I heard Ron Kovic speak

at a very big rally
of a couple thousand people.

He was paralyzed
during the Vietnam War,

and he became an activist
with the GI Movement.

He said, "I've lost my body,
yeah, but I've gained my mind."

And I thought, I could
build a movie around that.

You're a mess.

Were you wounded in 'Nam?

Right.

When did it happen?

A long time ago.

My husband
just went over there.

Poor bastard.

The studios didn't want
to make a film about the war.

It took six years until
we finally could get it made.

I had been working with returned
veterans from Vietnam for several years.

It was a story
about coming home

after being through
what they had been through.

If it's over with us,
it's over!

Well, what are you saying? That you're
not even gonna make the effort?

What I'm saying is...

-I don't belong in this house!
-Please...

And they're saying
that I don't belong over there!

You know, you wanna
be a part of it and patriotic,

and go out and...

get your licks in
at the US of A, and...

and... when you get over there,

it's a totally
different situation.

I mean...

...you grow up real quick,

because all you're
seeing is, um,

a lot of death.

There were soldiers
who came back feeling

that they should
never have gone.

There were also men,

even though they
were physically damaged,

who came back
still staunch believers.

I feel...

just as compassionate
for them as I do

for the other soldiers.

To men who were,
in Vietnam, who...

who I hurt

or whose pain I caused to...

to deepen because of things
that I said or I did, uh...

I-I feel that I owe them
an apology.

My intentions were never to hurt
them or make their situation worse.

It was... It was the contrary.

I was trying to help
end the killing, end the war.

But there were times when I was
thoughtless and careless about it,

and I'm... and I am...
very sorry that I hurt them,

and I want to apologize to them
and to their families.

During the time that
it took to make Coming Home,

I was making other movies.

But a lot of that time,
I was on the road with Tom.

Tom said, "We have to
go to the grassroots.

"We have to speak
to the silent majority.

"Let's do a 60-city tour,

over three months,
across the United States."

And within weeks, we created
the Indochina Peace Campaign.

We would sleep in people's
houses, you know, waterbeds.

Sometimes, we were both sq...
in a twin bed.

And it was in a motor home,
driving toward Buffalo,

when I became impregnated
with Troy.

I remember we called Tom's mother,
Jean, who lived in Detroit,

and she said, "You know, you're
gonna have to get married."

We thought that was bourgeois.

And she said, "You know, what are you gonna
do when you go on The Johnny Carson Show

"and you wanna talk about Vietnam,
and they wanna talk about

"how come you're having a kid and you're
not married," and that made sense.

I really wanted to get
married, to tell you the truth.

We got a gay
Episcopal priest,

who I think was thrown out of the
order for having married us,

and, uh, life went on.

With Troy,
we didn't want him to have

his father's name just
automatically, or Fonda.

You know, we wanted him to have a name
that didn't have so much baggage.

So we named him
Troy O'Donovan Garity.

My parents made
a conscious decision to...

try to live as...
normally as possible.

I know that that sounds insane
because they are abnormal.

--Ah! The winner is
Jane Fonda in Coming Home !

We went to the
Oscars in a station wagon.

My father wore like a...
the ugliest suit in the world.

I wore a T-shirt with a
hand-screened tuxedo thing on it.

It wasn't
a normal family unit.

Like we weren't, you know,
vacationing in tropical paradises.

You know, we holidayed
in conflict zones.

I was potty-trained

in a Vietnam bomb shelter.

I just got dragged with them.

Being in an IRA, you know,
stronghold in Belfast,

and a boy comes in
with his thumb blown off,

and my father dips the rag in his blood
and's like, "This is your blood.

This is your fucking blood.
This is your people."

I'm five.

My first 13 birthday parties
were fundraisers.

Anything that represented,
like, wealth or establishment

was looked on with
a lot of skepticism.

"If my coworker
can't have a pool,

"then I'm not having
a fucking pool.

I'd rather take that money give it
to the United Farm Workers Fund."

You know, the house I was raised in,
there was another family living...

in the house with us.

Uh, at times, we had organizers
sleeping on the porch.

There was a homeless person
that slept under the house.

I would come home sometimes
and he would be dressed in...

in my parents' clothes. Yeah.

They were one house
right next to the other.

Nightwatchman on one side and a
Marxist writer on the other.

And we lived in this house that was...
my dad called it a shack.

We had furniture
from Salvation Army.

We had no dishwasher,
we had no washing machine.

It was...

I was very happy,
and I was very proud of myself.

I wanted to show Tom
that I could do it.

I didn't want him to think
that I was... spoiled.

We were intensely in love,

pursuing common life goals.

The neighborhood was swollen
with activists, of all kinds.

It was a really, tiny,
little version of... of a commune.

I would be invited
all the time to come

for dinner
and there was no dinner.

And I was like, "I don't understand,
what happened to dinner?"

It was espresso.
Jane's not a cook.

We would get in our
little Volkswagen Bug,

and go to the local
pizzeria and...

it was wonderful.

But when you combine

the fever of celebrity

with the furor of...

anti-war, um, activities,

um, there was a lot of heat
around our home.

I will never forget
the day that we came home,

there wasn't a drawer
in the house

that wasn't pulled
out and turned over.

Everything was torn
out of the closets.

Papers were rifled,
desks were open.

I mean, someone had gone
through our house.

And it was done so blatantly,
and mess...

I mean, I knew that it was...
to scare us.

I was aware
that I was being followed,

and there was very little
attempt to disguise it.

There would be these guys in trench
coats with dark glasses.

The FBI would follow
Vanessa to school.

The more I saw them
the more my attitude was,

"You think
I'm gonna back down?"

I mean, that's one thing,
you know,

every time people think
they're gonna scare me,

then that's the wrong way
to approach it.

Because, no.

I saw, with Tom, what it
meant to build a movement,

what organizing meant.

He realized that what needed
to be focused on

was moving power out of the hands of
the super rich and the corporations,

into the hands of people, the way
it should be in a democracy.

So, the Campaign for
Economic Democracy evolved.

We knew that we wanted to spread a
message throughout the country.

It was difficult because we
had to raise so much money,

and it was during
a recession.

So Tom and I talked about this and we
thought, "Well, let's start a business

that will fund the work."

We talked about...
"Maybe a restaurant."

That would have been a disaster.

Then we thought, "Maybe a car wash
that doesn't rip people off."

Well, that... You know,
I mean, we had no idea.

And then one day,
I suddenly thought...

"The Workout.

If there's one thing
I understand, it's working out."

One camera.

There were no teleprompters
or anything like that.

I wrote the script sitting
on a floor of a hotel room.

We did our own hair
and makeup.

I mean, it was
a spit and a prayer.

And the rest is history.

That video came out,
and almost overnight

became and remains the number
one home video of all-time.

Are you ready to do the workout?

And it was owned by the Campaign
for Economic Democracy.

The organization owned it,
not me,

and all the profits
went into the organization.

Right, two.
And back, two.

It sold 17 million copies.

A video industry developed,
because everyone wanted

to buy my video and use it
over and over and over.

I'm the first
non-engineer

to be inducted into
the Video Hall of Fame.

You know, they credited me
for building the video industry.

It was a pretty interesting
time for me

because people recognized me
in a whole different way.

Women would come up to me and say, you know,
"I don't need sleeping pills anymore."

Another one would talk about how she
felt different, she felt stronger.

It's funny, when I thought about
it, that was true for me.

You know, I had suffered from an
eating disorder for a long time.

Nobody knew. You know,
one of the things about bulimia

is that it's a...
it's a disease of denial.

You know, it takes
a lot of subterfuge.

You're very tired,
and you're very angry,

and you're very self-hating.

And I realized,

I'm heading into
a really dark place,

and I'm... I either am gonna
head to the light

or I'm gonna succumb
to the dark,

and it's a life or death thing.

I went cold turkey.

It was really, really hard.

There was something about taking
control of my body, in that way,

that got me
over the addiction.

It changed my perception
of myself.

I think it was
Thomas Jefferson who said,

"Revolution begins
in the muscles."

And it was
a revolution for me,

but it was
completely unintentional,

you know, I did the workout
to fund the organization.

It was for Tom.

They formed a
team around politics,

and around the children.

But she didn't have
as much confidence

as I think
she should've in those days,

And Tom is so compelling that
he's a hard force to argue with.

You know, here is a man who
was considered an intellectual,

he was considered
a star in the movement,

and he'd written... I don't remember
how many books he'd written.

And then I write
Jane Fonda's Workout Book,

and it becomes the number one on
the New York Times for two years.

Two solid years.

The Workout Book ?

I mean, if I was him, I would have
had a certain degree of resentment.

He thought
I was superficial.

That I wasn't smart enough.

But I was producing
my own movies,

the kind of movies that say the
things that I think need saying.

Hello, this is Kimberly Wells,

and I'm here at the Ventana
Nuclear Power Plant,

owned and operated by
California Gas & Electric.

China Syndrome was the story

of a cover-up
at a nuclear power plant.

This is Jack Godell.
We have a serious condition.

You get everybody into safety areas
and make sure that they stay there.

Radiation in containment!

We were
very much attacked for,

for making it, the movie.

But then, the movie came out and two
weeks later, Three Mile Island happened.

All pregnant
women and preschool children

should evacuate
out of a five-mile radius...

The China Syndrome has
given Jane Fonda a new standing

in American society.

She's now a heroine
in her own right.

She's the Cassandra
of the Nuclear Holocaust.

It's shocking that
people from this area

had to go to see
The China Syndrome

in order to try to understand
what was happening to them.

Jane has always had an impulse
to go right for the heart of things.

We were aligned in the same way
that things were not right.

The question was
how we were gonna go about it,

and I felt, if I spoke out,

that there would be
a lot of resentment.

That didn't mean you couldn't do it that
way, and that's the choice that Jane made.

And it had a lot of strength
and a lot of power to it.

She made a lot of enemies,
but that's gonna happen

when you step up and speak
on the national stage.

What I admire about her is that she
did it and she didn't look back,

she didn't change her tone
or her voice.

She said,
"This is what I believe,

"this is what I feel, and this
is what I'm gonna say."

Forty million
women work in offices,

and for the first time in history,
they're beginning to organize,

they're beginning to say, "We deserve respect,
we deserve equal pay for equal work."

Jane is always looking for

what's the most important
current issue to deal with,

and 9 to 5 was her invention.

She decided to do a movie
about the 9-to-5 women.

Well, look, couldn't we just all
get together and... and complain?

Complain to who?

Let's face it, we are
in a pink-collared ghetto.

Let's have another drink.

We all knew we were doing
something that was important

for women office workers,

because we dealt with
all the issues:

sexual harassment,
unequal pay...

...the importance
of flex hours,

the importance of childcare,
all these things.

My mom was using film

as a platform to
try to affect change.

My parents
were really doing it.

They were
boots-on-the-ground,

dedicated mission,
"We're going forward."

That's where their
heads were at.

My parents walked the walk,
for sure.

They bought these hundred acres on top
of this mountain in Santa Barbara

and started a summer camp.

I mean,
it was every walk of life.

Children of farm workers, the
children of the heads of studios,

the children
of Black Panthers.

Laurel Springs
was really a fantasy

that they, together,
made a reality.

If you're a true
movement person,

you understand about
passing it along,

and watering the fields,
and making the seeds grow.

We were all on
this mountaintop together

and we were forced to coexist.

And it was at Laurel Springs
that I met Lulu.

Lulu, when she first came
to camp, she was maybe 12.

And she was... giggly,
and bright, and...

funny, with this wonderful laugh
and everyone just adored her.

She came two summers,
and then she disappeared.

And when she came back,
she was a different person.

She had been sexually abused
repeatedly by an acting coach.

She was shut down.

Her life was dysfunctional,
disorganized.

Her parents had been Black Panthers.
Her father was in jail.

She was failing in school.

It was like the flame had gotten real tiny,
but it was still there, you could see.

And I said, "I'll tell you
what, Lulu,

"if you bring your
grades up to a B,

"I'll bring you to Los Angeles,
to Santa Monica, where we live,

"and... you can live with us
and go to school down there,

if your mother
lets that happen."

And that's
what happened.

She didn't even say, "I
want to adopt you or I want you to be

my daughter." It was just... it
just kinda evolved into that,

'cause it really just was
"I want to help this child."

So when I came, I just started living in
their house, and then it became, you know,

I was just another kid
in the house.

It all goes back
to my mother's childhood.

I think her light was
almost put out...

when she was a child.

So, I think she likes to find people who are
in danger of losing theirs, and re... and...

and rekindle it.

No, my mom was... not orphaned,
but pretty damn close.

I had always wanted
to do a movie with my dad,

and this play seemed like
a perfect thing.

She bought On
Golden Pond for them,

she produced it,
she made it for him,

to... have a deeper shared experience
with him, before they couldn't anymore.

It was about the
reconciliation of a hard dad,

and a emotional daughter.

It was more than a script, it was an
opportunity for love and reconciliation.

Hello, Norman.

-Oh, look at you.
-Happy birthday.

Look at this
little fat girl, Ethel.

Oh, Norman!

-You're as thin as a rail.
Isn't she? -Sure...

Katherine Hepburn and
my father played my parents,

and I was extremely
intimidated.

The parallels were very, very close
between the characters, and... and...

my father and I in real life.

But we never spoke of it.

We never spoke about anything
like that, ever.

There was a great deal
of invisible healing going on.

For Jane, it was
the ultimate catharsis.

In the movie, the main scene
between Chelsea and her father

was a scene that, whenever I would read
it and during every single rehearsal,

I would become
very, very, very emotional,

because it was
so very close to home.

I wanna talk to you. I, um...

I think that, um,

maybe you and I should have the kind of
relationship that we're supposed to have.

What kind of
a relationship is that?

Well, you know, like a...
like a father and a daughter.

Eh, just in the nick
of time, huh?

Worried about the will, are you?

Well, I'm leaving
everything to you,

except what I'm taking
with me.

Just stop it.

I don't want anything.

It just... it seems that you and me have
been mad at each other for so long.

I didn't know we were mad. I thought
we just didn't like each other

Knowing that my
father doesn't like

to have anything that's
not rehearsed,

everything has to be rehearsed
down to the nth degree,

I decide to save one thing that I'm gonna
do when I think it's his last close-up,

because I want him...

to do something unplanned. I don't
know what it... how he would react,

but it will be emotional.

I... I wanna be your friend.

I reached out
and I touched his arm.

Does this mean you'll...
come around more often?

It'd mean
a lot to your mother.

And he put his hand up,

but I saw...

the tears in his eyes...

and, you know, it just...
it meant the world to me.

He loved her. That he
couldn't express it in three words

is a kind of tragedy.

But in his eyes and in his
face, he still expressed it.

And the winner is...
Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond.

Oh, Dad, I'm so happy,
and proud, for you.

On Golden Pond isn't a movie.
It's a vehicle to try to make

her family closer.

Perhaps because she felt other parts
of her family... were in limbo.

You know, my sister definitely
had a harder time

relating with my mother
than I have.

I remember coming
back from the hospital,

with newborn Troy,

and Vanessa,
happily staring at him.

But it was also apparent
that he was the different one.

He was the prince.

Vanessa saw me

taking Troy with me,
as I had not taken her.

And she saw me living
with Troy's father...

which was not her situation. And I can't
imagine that it wasn't difficult for her.

The thing about Jane is, she
had to learn how to be a mother...

because that isn't what she
experienced. She experienced,

"Come down and say good night
to the guests,

and go back upstairs and be
your perfect little selves."

And even thought her mother was
loving, she was clearly sad.

She must've, as a child,
really felt that sadness,

you know, it had its effect.
She's not a natural caretaker.

She had no training for
emotional intelligence, at all.

My mother didn't
have a good example of what

a healthy relationship
looked like,

neither did my father.

Neither one of us were big
on talking about our feelings.

Our lives became more and more
like... on two separate tracks.

Tom once said,

"If Jane and I find
ourselves together,

it was a mistake
in scheduling."

I think that in the end,
neither one of us were happy.

Living with a public figure,

who has, uh,

movie studios and... and
public relations firms working

night and day to make her
larger than life, uh,

it is... it becomes artificial.
The house becomes a prop,

suddenly, uh, the bedroom
could become a prop,

the children are props.

Where's life?

She felt the call of Hollywood.

That was very jarring to me.

I was drinking and womanizing.

I wasn't ready to be
the husband of somebody

that was preoccupied
with being an actress.

He was very rough on her.

I think she was very lonely.

It was a vulnerability she couldn't allow in
and I think a truth she couldn't allow in.

So I think she would've
gone on accepting that.

He fell in love with somebody...

um... and I found out.

It did knock the foundation
out from under me because...

I just never could have
imagined life without Tom.

If I'm not with Tom Hayden,
then I'm nobody.

Here she was alone at a
critical moment for an actress.

when you're still beautiful,
and sexy, and everything,

but the guys don't want
to play with you anymore.

When Redford was making
the movie Legal Eagles

and Debra Winger got cast,
and Jane didn't,

she went, "Oh my God,
it's happened.

"Redford isn't fighting for me,
or the studio doesn't want me,

they want the new,
fabulous young star."

It was a very difficult time.

Just dark... and painful.

And then, a friend of mine
gave me the name

of this unbelievable psychic...

who...

predicted...

things... I mean,
down to the minutiae.

She said to me, "I see money.
I see so much money."

And then she said, "And I see land...
as far as I can see."

Of course,
it was Ted Turner.

The words used most often

to describe
Robert Edward Turner III

are controversial,

rash,

flamboyant,

controversial,

ambitious,

competitive,

and controversial.

You bet your bippy.

The best advice
is never do anything.

You'll never get in trouble
if you don't do anything.

But on the other hand, you'll never
get anywhere either... you know.

Faint heart ne'er won fair lady.

The day after...

my divorce from Tom Hayden
was announced, the phone rang,

and this booming
Southern accent,

he said, "Would you want to
go out with me?"

And I said, "Well, I'm having
a nervous breakdown.

Call me in six months."

And six months to the day,
Ted asked me out again.

Ted was a genius,

billionaire,

entrepreneur,

but he was also gorgeous.

I mean, he was really a handsome
man, and very, very sexy.

On the first date...

the way...

he looked at me...

I felt like I was being eaten.

He was devouring me,

and I got goosebumps
all over me.

Then he said, "You know,
I don't know much about you,

"so I went into CNN
and I pulled your archives.

There was a stack
about that high."

Then he said, "Then I went
and I pulled my archives.

And mine are this high.
Mine are bigger than yours."

I mean, by the time we got to the
restaurant, which was only 15 minutes away,

I felt like a tsunami
had rolled over me.

When he took me back,

at the door he said,
"Can I hug you?"

And he hugged me, and he said, "I... I'm...
I have to tell you that I'm smitten"

In his heart, Ted is not a wealthy,
powerful, privileged person.

He's a little boy
who likes to play,

and who has wild brilliance,

and that's what
I was attracted to.

Ted adored her.
He'd never put her down.

Ted is fucking great.

I pronounce you, now, man and wife.
You may kiss the bride.

All right!

Their wedding was
hilarious, just hilarious.

It's the only wedding after which we all
mounted horses and went grouse shooting

I'll never forget here
on our second date in Montana.

I remember driving around and he looked out of
the window of the Jeep at a bird that was...

you could see it in silhouette,

and he said what it was,

and he told me the
nesting patterns of the bird.

And I thought,
"I could love this man."

It was so clear...

that he... had a connection
to the land,

and to the critters,

and... and...

...so do I.

I grew up in the
Santa Monica mountains,

and I knew
all the little animals,

and the bugs, and the skunks, and
the coyotes, and I loved them.

The household wasn't very happy,

so that's where
I found happiness.

We were both children
of suicide,

so we understood each other.

Like me, he had found solace
in nature.

We would ride every day, sometimes
three, four, five hours.

And hiking, and fly-fishing.

You know, we had adventures.

Jane, am I correct that
you've given up making movies?

Oh yeah. When I met...

Ted, I was thinking about
doing it anyway,

but when I met Ted,
that clenched it.

She'd begun the marriage by saying
to Ted, "I'll give up work,

but you give up girls."

You mean ranching can take the place of
all the excitement of doing the movies?

Ted can.

Is that from you, Jeff?

Gee, that cost a fortune!

I thought that
would be a disaster,

with our liberal,
crunchy granola,

leftist kids
coming into his family.

And it melded amazingly well.

I learned a lot...

with the men in my life,
but I learned the most with Ted.

His vision was macro,

and I'm micro.

So we were a great partnership.

It was...

a stunningly,
interesting marriage.

Because they shared a view of
the world, an internationalism,

a curiosity.

And it was great to be out of
Hollywood in that dismal period

where she'd be
looking for gigs.

It was fun.

But, you know, in the end,
it didn't last.

Hi, Marta.

I'm good, I'm in a car heading
for my favorite ex-husband's

ranch in Montana.

I think you look great.

-Ha, I don't...
-I think you look great!

You look great, too.

Oh, it is?

Gettin' old is hard,
isn't, man?

Oh, it is.

That tree looks great.
Do you ever sit under it

-with your various girlfriends?
-No.

That's your tree.

It's good to see you.

It's good to see you.

Yeah.

Well, we had fun in here.

Can I be bossy for a minute?

Sure.

This isn't a good idea.

Why?

Because you walk into the back

of a whole lot of pictures.

You should turn them,

and some of them should face
this way, and for... Oh!

Awww.

We had a wonderful 10 years.

But I had to hide
a part of me,

in order to please him.

He would call me when I was in L.A.
and he was in Atlanta,

and he would say,
"I'm... shrinking."

When he is removed
from his object of love,

and he's alone,

he actually does feel
like he's getting small.

It's very deep
and very serious.

Ted can't be alone.

And so my whole life

had to be about him.

It was rare that
I could go to a conference.

The women's conference in Beijing,
I had to really negotiate.

The Cairo conference, the UN conference
on population and development.

I began an organization called
the Georgia Campaign

for Adolescent
Pregnancy Prevention,

and it was very, very
important to me.

But there was a lot that I
wanted to do that I couldn't do.

As we moved through the decade
that we spent together...

I became more of a feminist.

And so, my focus
was more and more on...

on women's empowerment.

But it's hard to be a complete feminist if
you're in a marriage that doesn't quite work.

None of my marriages
were democratic,

because I was
too worried about pleasing.

I had to be a certain way
in order for them to love me.

I had to look a certain way,

and I looked different for
all of them.

I wanted to be living
as a whole Jane,

fully realized Jane.

I hoped that Ted would feel
okay about it, because...

I really loved him, and I was
hoping that it would be forever.

But that's not the way
it played out.

When you and Jane
parted, how did that affect you?

It was...

very difficult. I...

thought it was a...

...a mistake.

I've survived, and so has she.

But, uh...

I feel like I was happier
when I was with her than...

subsequently.

When you reside
within your own skin,

you... you can feel it.

You're holding...

all of you:

your anger,

your kindness

your judgmentalness.

Everything that makes up
what you are,

including the fact that you may be stronger
and braver than the man you're married to.

When the time came that I said to
him, "Ted, this isn't gonna work...

"unless there are changes,"

we were in a car, and...

all the oxygen left the car,
and I knew...

it's not gonna happen.

It was awful.

And...

I could hear a voice saying,

"Oh God, Fonda, come on.
He's handsome, he's cute,

"he's sexy. You know you
never have to work again.

Lighten up. Come on."

And over here, there was
a softer little voice saying,

"If you stay...

"you will never... be authentic,

"you will never
be able to be whole."

Dina, I burnt out my blender.

After Ted Turner,
everything was so...

wildly quiet.

It was probably the most profound
turning point of my life.

I left this man...

and one part of me was so sad,

and the other part of me said,

"I'm gonna be okay.

I don't need a man
to make me okay."

That... that was it,
and I never went back.

The problem is you don't
understand the problem.

It's not personal.

I'm still being treated the way I was for
40 years, and I'm not gonna settle anymore.

Can't you see how disrespectful
you were being?

I might, I will, I am.
Yes, we've talked about it.

Doing? Doing?

I'll tell you what we're doing,
we're... we're... we're...

we're making vibrators
for women with arthritis.

Okay. God...

Seventy-eight years old, I have
a scene in bed with Sam Elliot.

Pretty good, huh?

It was fun, too.

Paula Weinstein,
who's my best friend,

she called me and she said, "The Zanucks
who were producing the Oscars that year

want you to present an award."

And I said, "I can't, I'm not
in the business anymore."

She said, "Shut up,

"Vera Wang's gonna make you
a dress

and Sally Hershberger's
gonna cut your hair."

I came out...

I could hear a gasp
from the audience

'cause I looked really good.

And right away,
I got offered Monster-In-Law.

You know, I thought, "Well...

"people are gonna go see it
because of Jennifer Lopez,

"but they're gonna discover,
or rediscover, Jane Fonda."

I'm sorry,
I thought it was air freshener.

Jane, I'm... I'm telling you,
I couldn't be, uh,

happier for you. I'm a... This
thing has just been tremendous.

And I would think after this run of the play,
you would like some time just to relax, but no!

You see, I'm the
brand ambassador for L'Oreal

for older women,
but they never...

nobody's ever had
a brand ambassador my age.

I competed with Margaret Mead,
and what they have me doing...

--...is um, hand
cream, face cream, and embalming oil.

I never thought I'd
still be doing this.

If you would have told me,
that I would be my age now,

and still working,

I would have been
totally flabbergasted.

Jane! Jane! Jane!

I'm just kind of amazed
that I have...

managed to recreate a career,
and I'm...

as busy as I am.

God!

-I mean, can't a lady have a...
-Leona!

We don't have the trust
of the public anymore.

Get it back!

I forgot, I forgot
to slow down, I'm sorry.

Now, I'm making a movie
with Bob Redford again.

She is so busy.

No grass grows under her feet.

She puts me in the shade.

You ready for sushi?

Yes, I am.

Grace and Frankie, when
it came along, just seemed right.

We can play out
this part of our lives

in a project that speaks

what we wanna speak about.

Older women, older people,
older, uh,

gay people,
older straight people.

How am I gonna explain to my kids that their
grandma makes sex toys for other grandmas?

Well, I'll tell you
what to tell them, honey.

You tell them that we
make things for people like us.

She lived
her life in front of us,

and as she's grown older,
she's shown us what that's like.

She's not afraid
to be out there.

We are sick and tired of being
dismissed by people like you.

-Mic drop.
-It's about answering back,

not going quietly
into that great good night.

And then go ahead and lower down and when you
lower down, I want you to let your knees bend.

Great, and then pull
right back up again.

-So...
-Using my arms?

You could use both so r...

I'm glad...

that I look good for my age.

But I've also had plastic surgery,
I'm not gonna lie about that.

On one level, I hate the fact
that I have had the need...

to alter myself physically

to feel that I'm okay.

I wish that I wasn't...

like that.

I love older faces.

I love lived-in faces.
I love Vanessa Redgrave's face.

I wish I was braver.

But, um...

I am what I am.

Your age is less chronological,

and more spiritual,
and attitudinal.

I was so old at 20.

I mean, maybe people who knew me
then would have said, "What?!"

But on a soul level,
I was really...

I saw no future.

I was very dark,

very sad person.

There was no joy.

I didn't really know who I was.

It took me a really long time
to find my own narrative.

Few people move
me as much as she does.

She's gotta fight all her life

her insecurity,

knowing her own value.

And that's a journey that continues for
her. I think she's gonna have that...

forever, but...
but nobody braver to tackle it.

When I watched my dad die,

I felt that he...

had a lot of regrets.

I do not want to get
to the end of life...

with a lot of regrets, and I know
that the regrets won't be what I did,

they'll be for the things
I didn't do.

This is the beginning
of my last act.

In order to know
how to go forward,

I was gonna have to know
where I'd been.

Let's see.

That's my grandmother.

That's the house
where my dad grew up.

If you really go back,

and try to understand
who you've been,

you have to understand
who your parents were.

Why were they not able...

to really look at you
with eyes of love,

reflect yourself back
with eyes of love.

Why did they have duct tape over their
eyes? Why did narcissism blind them...

from being able
to really see you?

Who were their parents?
Why did their parents...

treat them the way they did?

I began, in 2000,
to write my memoirs.

I dedicated them to my mother, because
I thought it was gonna force me...

to figure out who she was.

I found out that my mother
was the life of the party.

"Everybody loved being around
your mother!" They did?

"Oh my gosh! Oh, and she was...
I mean, men loved her."

And her father's, my grandfather's
side, of the family said, "Gasp!

"Oh we all wanted to be close to
your mother. She was a rock."

I was like, "My mother?"
It was such a...

unlike my image of who she was.
It just stunned me.

All these conflicting stories came
to me and I'd always sensed that...

...she must have had a really
hard childhood. And, um...

so with the help of a lawyer,
I got her medical records

from the institution
where she killed herself, and...

um...

I found,
from her medical records

that she suffered from manic depression,
that's what they called it.

It's today called bipolar.

And there was
this little autobiography,

they must have asked her
to write her life story.

What a gift.

Suddenly it's like,

it had nothing to do with me!

It wasn't that
I was not lovable.

It's that things would happen
to her, she had a very, very

hard childhood, and, um,

it broke her, in some way on some
fundamental way, it broke her.

I think the most defining
moment in my mother's life

was the death of her mother.

My mother died in 1950,

and I never had an inclination
to come here.

And at the time, it's the right
time for me to come and...

and visit her grave.

I finished her life story.

And all I wanted to do
was take her in my arms

and just say, "I'm so sorry.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry
that I wasn't...

"more loving to you, I didn't know. I'm
so sorry you had to go through that.

Please forgive me."

Their incapacity to love
wasn't because you weren't...

worthy of love, but it was because
they, too, had been wounded.

And then you can forgive.

It goes from one generation
to another, and...

somebody's got to
break the cycle.

One of the reasons that
I wanted to write my book was

because I wanted my daughter
to know

why I wasn't a better parent
to her

and that it had nothing
to do with her.

I get so sad...

when I think of what I wasn't for
my daughter that she needed.

And it's hard to take that in
'cause it's so painful,

but it's never
too late, I think.

There are things between
us now that...

didn't used to be there,
and I think we both feel it.

Deep down, we love each other.

I hope that she'll be able
to forgive me.

And I feel lucky that I have my
family, and my extended family.

I'm now having relationships
that are much more democratic.

But I am most myself
when I'm with my women friends.

Like a lot of people,
I sort of thought that I would

at some point, you know,
kind of retire, and...

but that's not gonna happen.

Actress Jane Fonda
traveled to Standing Rock

to serve Thanksgiving meals
to demonstrators.

This is a battle for, not just
Standing Rock, but for everyone.

It's hard to be really happy
if your life doesn't have meaning.

People turn to religion because
it gives them some meaning,

but I am an activist.

Hey, hey! Ho, ho!
Donald Trump has got to go!

But we're in a whole new era.

When there's a catastrophe that's happened,
we have to be out in the streets.

We don't have to choose between the environment
and the economy. That is a false choice.

Actresses Jane
Fonda and Lily Tomlin

among several celebrities
joining the protest,

and marching
with the demonstrators.

Say it with me:

I pledge to resist!

I pledge to resist!

She is not a
fly-by-night activist.

It is deep in her soul.

There is no stopping that part of
herself 'cause it feeds everything.

They wouldn't let us in,

but we can still take
our money out!

There's this kinetic energy.

She won't stop.

She's on a mission.

This intent to do well

keeps her demons at bay.

Sometimes I want to say, "You don't
need to prove anything else to anyone.

"You don't need to push...
so hard, constantly."

But...

she is who she is and...

I... I, quite honestly, I wouldn't
change anything about her.

I had spent so much of my life feeling
if I'm not perfect, no one can love me.

And then...

I realized that trying to be
perfect is a toxic journey.

We're not perfect.

We have to love our shadow,

we have to embrace and accept
our shadows.

And sometimes,
good enough is good enough.