Jane Fonda: Still fresh & evergreen

TEXT & PHOTOS: MOIRA SULLIVAN, SWEDISH FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

Today, Jane remains one of the most admired women in the USA and as her recent visit to Sweden shows, she is also popular in this country.

JANE FONDA IS NO NEWCOMER to Stockholm. The first time she came here was in the early 1970’s to join in Swedish protests against the Vietnam War. She visited again in 1989 to promote the film Old Gringo and in March 2006 returned once more, this time to promote her book, My Life So Far, which has been translated into Swedish.
        Jane was invited to several events during her visit in March. The first was to introduce On Golden Pond for a retrospective of her films at the Swedish Film Institute Cinemateque. The film was the last one her father Henry Fonda made and Jane revealed how working on the film had brought them together.
        My Life So Far is Jane’s autobiography that she began to write in her “third act” at the age of 62 after the dissolution of her marriage with Ted Turner. Fonda reveals her difficult upbringing with an absent father, and a mother who committed suicide. Jane and her brother later read about it in a movie magazine, though they had been told she died of natural causes. Jane writes about her years with the French director Roger Vadim, and the making of Barbarella, a cult “sci fi” film where she became a US armed forces pin up.
        While in France she noted with uneasiness how unpopular the escalation of war against Vietnam had become through conversations with American GI soldiers. After returning to the USA she continued to meet with students and enlisted soldiers. Her interest took her to Vietnam on a fact-finding mission to determine how Vietnamese civilians were being treated and to meet with US soldiers who were against the war. Her involvement became the subject of an insensitive government and media campaign to chastise the antiwar movement. During this time she married the political activist Tom Hayden.
        Today, Jane remains one of the most admired women in the USA and judging by the meeting with Swedish journalist Stina Dabrowski at the Stockholm Kulturhuset, she is also popular in Sweden.
        I met Jane at a press conference in Stockholm at the Grand Hotel where she discussed why she wrote the book, her relationship to Sweden and her acting career.
        “When I turned sixty-two things happened, one is for the first time in my life I owned who I am. Now that may sound weird because I am famous, I’ve been famous for a long time. I’m privileged, successful. But I had never ever been able to say I am someone [who] deserves to be loved. And the other thing that I realized is that I would regret at the end of my life that I had never experienced intimacy. And that’s when I realized that I had a book in me, the story of a girl who didn’t feel that she was good enough to be what I became at age 62, finally a complete human being”.


How do you look back on your time in Stockholm with the Vietnam antiwar demonstrations?
“Well Sweden is a very liberated territory for us in the West. And I feel proud of this country. You are a role model. Olof Palme in particular, God rest his soul. People came here a lot from the American antiwar movement to talk to the Swedish antiwar movement people, to talk strategy”.

How do you feel about your roles in films like Klute and Coming Home and your recent success in Monster in Law?
“I look back at Klute and Coming Home with tremendous pride. I think they are both very different but very wonderful films. Coming Home was the first film that I was involved with as a producer and it is still painfully relevant today. It was a beautiful film, and Klute was a turning point for me. I made Monster in Law after 15 years because as I was finishing my book I realized I’m very different than I was when I decided to quit. And I wondered if I could find joy in acting again. And although it was a “popcorn movie” as we call it, a summer movie, it was very popular and I had such a good time. It’s easier to be an actor when you are a whole person.”
        “Listen, I just want to work, I’m not producing movies anymore. It takes too long. You know I would frankly love to do a sequel to Monster In Law but I don’t think that probably will happen but I love doing comedy. I love doing physical comedy--Nine to Five was one example, and Fun with Dick and Jane. I’m doing another movie in June but it’s not a comedy – it’s a family drama. But I just want to play roles that are full and multidimensional”.