Not only a Hollywood legend, Jane Fonda is also an icon of activism who has been risking her career, her reputation, and even her life in support of worthy causes for over 50 years. Here, the inspiring octogenarian opens up about maintaining her resistance endurance, finding feminism, and passing the baton to the next generation of leaders
All this might come as a surprise to younger folks who know her best as the straightlaced Grace opposite one of her real-life besties, Lily Tomlin, who plays hippie freak Frankie on Netflix’s hit comedy Grace & Frankie. It might even be a surprise to some of us ’80s kids, whose Jane Fonda associations lie solidly in the realm of pastel sweatbands, high-cut leotards, and leg lifts set to synth beats—her workout video empire is legendary.
Though her recent brushes with the law have been intentional, getting arrested is nothing new for Fonda. She was first placed in handcuffs shortly after her activist awakening, which came more than five decades earlier. “I spent the first 30 years of my life as a non-activist,” she says. “Even worse, [I was] unaware, and kind of depressed. I didn’t know what the point of my life was. I didn’t feel any purpose.
Public disapproval has never stopped Fonda from engaging in a cause, and ending the Vietnam War wasn’t the only early activism she put her fame behind. Though, as an immuno-compromised 82-year-old she hasn’t been on the streets marching with Black Lives Matter, she’s been doing the work of checking her privilege long before “white fragility” was a thing. In the early ’70s, she worked with the Black Panther Party, helping to raise bail money for their political prisoners.
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