From Actor To Activist: The Amazing Life Of Jane Fonda

The following article mentions suicide.

Jane Fonda was born in New York City in 1937 to Frances Seymour Fonda and Henry Fonda, the latter of whom was a silver screen legend. Jane would go on to pursue acting as well, becoming a member of the Actors Studio in New York in her late teens. What followed has been an impressive show business career, including films like "Fun with Dick and Jane" and "9 to 5," as well as TV shows such as Netflix's "Grace and Frankie." It's baffling, then, that Jane Fonda has consistently downplayed her success.

Jane has also dedicated much of her life to activism, supporting everything from anti-war movements to environmentalism, women's rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and beyond. This pursuit, she told Harper's Bazaar in 2021, taught her that "power has to come from inside." She went on: "It has to come from knowing who you are, why you're on earth, what is the meaning of your life. That's power."

Somehow, in between acting and fighting to make the planet a better place, she found romance — although being married three times meant Jane Fonda's love life has been complicated. Nonetheless, she raised a family, and Jane's relationship with her kids is a beautiful one. Without further ado, this is the truly impressive life of Jane Fonda.

As the daughter of actor Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda grew up in the world of show biz. As a child, her relationship with Henry was complicated and strained, but she ended up following in his footsteps regardless. "At first, I just needed to get a job. I was still living with my father, and my stepmother wanted me out of the house," she recalled to Vogue in 2025. "I was friends with Susan Strasberg, and she convinced me to go study with her father [Lee Strasberg]. He gave me the confidence and courage to start thinking of myself as an actor, and I sorta got into it slowly."

Jane made her acting debut at the age of 22 with a part on "Tall Story" in 1960. Five years later, Jane gained more attention with the lead role in 1965's "Cat Ballou," before breaking into the mainstream with "Barbarella" in 1968.

In "Barbarella," Jane played the titular role — but she has since revealed her mixed feelings about the now-iconic movie. "For a long time, I couldn't look at it," she told CBS in 2005 when discussing her character in the movie. "But I can look at it now and laugh at it, and find it very charming."

While she was an up-and-coming actor, Jane Fonda was romantically linked to a few famous men. These included Warren Beatty, although she later recalled to W Magazine (via HuffPost) that she thought he was gay at the time, as well as actors William Wellman Jr. and Christian Marquand. Previously, Fonda lost her virginity to actor and stage manager James Franciscus, whom she dated when she was 18. In an interview on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" decades later, she described Franciscus as the best kisser. "I've never had a kiss like that ever since," she said.

After all those high-profile romances, in August 1965, Jane Fonda got married for the first time. She tied the knot with Roger Vadim, a movie producer and director from France. When she wed Roger, Fonda became the stepmother to his daughter from a previous relationship, Nathalie Vadim. Their family expanded when they welcomed a daughter named Vanessa Vadim in 1968. However, Fonda and Roger's relationship unraveled, and they divorced in 1973.

During her first pregnancy in 1968, which was also the height of the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda began to educate herself on current affairs across the world; this would ultimately lead to a lifetime of activism work. "I was pregnant, which makes a woman like a sponge, very open to what's going on around her," she told the Harvard Business Review in 2018. "It was around that time that I began to realize that I wanted to change my life and participate in trying to end the war."

Following this, one of Fonda's earliest moments of activism saw her visit a group of Native Americans who were occupying Alcatraz in San Francisco from 1969 to 1971. Around this time, she also aligned herself with the Black Panther Party — this, she told Interview in 2020, got her in trouble with the U.S. government.

In 1970, Jane Fonda was arrested at an airport on drug-smuggling charges.At the time she had been traveling for a Vietnam War speaking tour, and as she would later express, she believes her arrest was a result of her anti-war stance. Her striking police mug shot, in which she poses with a raised fist and a stoic expression, quickly garnered widespread attention.

In 2009, she would reflect on the impact of her mug shot and her arrest on her own website. In the post, Fonda recalled telling the U.S. customs agents that the pills were daily vitamins, but they still put her behind bars for the night. "I was released on bond and months later, after every pill had been tested in a lab," she wrote. "The charges were dismissed and there were a few paragraphs hidden in the back of papers that they were vitamins, not drugs."

Fonda, who has been arrested for her activism several times since the 1970 incident, has long suspected that this particular arrest was a direct order from the White House. "I think they hoped this 'scandal' would ... ruin my respectability," she said. "I was handcuffed and put in the Cleveland Jail, which is when the mug shot was taken." 

In the early 1970s, around the same time she was rising through the ranks as an activist, Jane Fonda landed a role alongside Donald Sutherland in "Klute." But the pair became more than just co-stars. Despite both being married at the time, Fonda and Sutherland fell for one another and struck up a romance. As Sutherland recounted to Rolling Stone in 2018, "We'd already been cast but had not started shooting, and one day, she made it very clear, via a somewhat provocative suggestion, that I should come home with her."

Although things didn't last long between the pair, it seems they went on to maintain a respectful relationship. When Sutherland died in 2024 at 88 years old, Fonda took to Instagram to share an emotional tribute to her former lover. "Donald was a brilliant actor and a complex man who shared quite a few adventures with me," she wrote. "I am heartbroken."

While Jane Fonda's affair with Donald Sutherland resulted in a scandal, her portrayal of Bree Daniels in "Klute" won her the Oscar for Best Actress in 1972. At the 44th Academy Awards, Fonda's win marked a career-defining moment — but unfortunately, the actor was too unwell to enjoy it. To that end, Fonda kept her acceptance speech short and sweet. "There's a great deal to say, and I'm not going to say it tonight," she said, per People.

"I had the flu — I was really sick," she recalled while speaking to author Dave Karger for his book "50 Oscar Nights." Fonda said she spent the night thanking those who had voted for her and "saying exactly what my father told me to say." She went on: "Then I walked off the stage, and I went in a corner backstage and cried."

Days after her divorce from Roger Vadim was finalized, Jane Fonda went on to wed activist Tom Hayden in 1973. The pair said "I do" at an intimate ceremony, which took place at Fonda's Los Angeles estate. She was pregnant at the time and the newlyweds had a son named Troy Garity later that year.

Almost a decade later, in 1982, Fonda and Hayden adopted 14-year-old Mary Luana Williams. Williams, the daughter of Black Panther activists, was born and raised in East Oakland, and she first met Fonda and Hayden at a summer camp they founded. Fonda and Hayden opened up their home to her when they learned of her tumultuous home life.  

"I moved to Jane's hacienda surrounded by gardens and avocado trees in Santa Monica," Williams recalled in an essay for Oprah.com. "She sat me down soon after I arrived and said, 'I see you as my daughter now. If you want, you can call me Mom.' I also had new siblings, a little brother named Troy, and two sisters, Vanessa and Nathalie. ... Landing on the moon would have been less disorienting. Everything was new."

At the 51st Academy Awards, which took place in April 1979, Jane Fonda won best actress for the second time in her career. She won the award for her role as Sally Hyde in "Coming Home," a Hal Ashby-helmed drama about a woman who falls in love with a veteran being treated in a VA hospital while her husband is stationed in Vietnam. Her co-star, Jon Voight, also took home the best actor award, and the film won in the original screenplay category, too.

"I'm so happy. I wanted to win very much because I'm so proud of 'Coming Home,' and I want many people to see the movie," Fonda said in her acceptance speech. She also thanked her husband for helping her "believe that besides being entertaining, movies can inspire and teach and even be healing."

After starring alongside the likes of Dolly Parton and her own father in hit movies, Jane Fonda became the OG of home workout videos in the 1980s. "No one had ever done a fitness video before," Fonda recalled of the idea in a post on her website marking the 30th anniversary of her first workout video. "It was spit and prayer, flying by the seat of our tights and leg warmers."

Elsewhere in the post, Fonda noted how her video ended up launching a new industry altogether. "I was inducted into the Video Hall of Fame," she added of her tape's success. That was certainly well deserved, given that Fonda's "Original Workout" VHS went on to sell more than 17 million copies, making it one of the highest-selling tapes of all time.

In 1990, Jane Fonda divorced her second husband after 17 years of marriage. The following year, she wed Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. Fonda and Turner stayed together for over a decade, but she filed for divorce in April 2001, stating that the marriage was "irretrievably broken," per People.

Explaining the reason for their split, Fonda told The New Yorker in 2001, "He needs someone to be there 100 per cent of the time." She went on, "He thinks that's love. It is not love. It's babysitting. We went in different directions. I grew up." Per People, Fonda maintained that Turner was her "favorite" of all her former husbands.

In 2005, with three marriages and decades of acting and activism behind her (and, as it turns out, still ahead of her), Jane Fonda released her memoir, "My Life So Far." According to her official website, Fonda divided the book into three acts to represent the main stages of her life up to that point.

In "Act One," as she called it, Fonda reflected on her childhood, first films, and marriage to Roger Vadim. In the second portion of the memoir, she explored the foundations of her activism as well as her marriages to Tom Hayden and Ted Turner. In the final section of the book, Fonda writes of how she is doing "the work of a lifetime." That being: "To begin living consciously in a way that might inspire others."

In the same year that her memoir was released — and after a long off-screen period — Jane Fonda returned to acting with a starring role in "Monster-in-Law." In the movie, which also featured Jennifer Lopez, Fonda played Viola Fields, a woman set on breaking up her son's relationship before he walks down the aisle.

Reflecting on her return to the screen after 15 years, Fonda told the Daily Mirror that landing the role was one of the luckiest moments in her career. "It was a great comeback for me," she said.

After "Monster-in-Law," Jane Fonda's career renaissance only continued to gain steam. The film icon went on to land a number of roles over the next few years before signing on to star in her own series on Netflix. "Grace & Frankie," which debuted on the streaming platform in 2015, stars Fonda and her longtime friend Lily Tomlin. "Grace & Frankie," a comedy about two women who form an unlikely bond after their husbands leave them, ran for seven seasons, ending in 2022.

Although Fonda revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that the show's premise did trigger abandonment issues for her initially, she later came to love the positive impact that the series had on others. "I have long wanted to give a cultural face to old age," she told Vogue in 2016. "I thought this was a show that could potentially give a lot of hope to people, especially to older people, especially to women. And I think that's actually happened."

While she has undeniably had a lot of ups in her life, in 2018, Jane Fonda reflected on one of the most devastating pieces of her story: her mother's suicide. In an emotional HBO documentary titled "Jane Fonda in Five Acts," Fonda recalled how her mother's death when she was just 12 years old profoundly impacted her life.

"As a child, you always think it was your fault," Fonda told People ahead of the documentary's release. "It takes a long time to get over the guilt." After spending decades carrying the weight of the tragic loss, Fonda ultimately learned how to process her mother's death. "It wasn't that I wasn't lovable. [She] had issues," the actor explained. "The minute you know that, you can feel tremendous empathy ... and you can forgive."

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Across her decades of activism, Jane Fonda was involved in many different projects and causes and, in 2019, she turned her attention to the environment. That year, she teamed up with Greenpeace to start Fire Drill Fridays, which aimed to bring "together frontline activists, youth, Indigenous leaders, climate experts, celebrities, and lovers of the planet to demand our elected leaders act on the climate emergency," according to the organization.

In addition to her work with Greenpeace, in 2020, Fonda wrote a book dedicated to environmental activism. In "What Can I Do?: The Truth About Climate Change and How to Fix It," the Hollywood legend wrote about how people can get involved in climate change activism. She has also said that her activism work has had a positive impact on her overall mental health.

As well as fighting to save the planet, Jane Fonda has gone through several bouts of cancer. In 2010, she was diagnosed with breast cancer following a routine mammogram, with Onco Daily noting that the actor and activist had reported no symptoms before that. Following her diagnosis, Fonda underwent a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy.

More than a decade later, Fonda was sadly faced with cancer once again. In 2022, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and began chemotherapy due to the more aggressive nature of the disease. Thankfully, Fonda's treatment was a success. Three months after revealing her diagnosis, she announced that her cancer was in remission via a post on her website.

For many, a milestone birthday is an excuse to be the center of attention — perhaps a fancy cake will be ordered, and a special gift will be wrapped up. Not for Jane Fonda, however. When she turned 85, the actor and activist hosted a benefit to mark the milestone birthday, rather than an all-eyes-on-me party.

Fonda dedicated her 85th birthday celebration to the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential, which she founded decades earlier in 1995. In a post on Instagram announcing the benefit, Fonda emphasized the importance of the organization, and explained why it was such a worthy cause to celebrate. In the comment section, fans unsurprisingly heaped plenty of praise onto Fonda. "I admire you so much," one person wrote, as someone else added: "Thank you for all you do!"

Clearly, Jane Fonda has lived an incredible life, which is why she took home the lifetime achievement award at the 2025 SAG-AFTRA Awards. Per People, Fonda expressed how touched she was by the audience's reaction. "Your enthusiasm makes this seem less like a late-twilight-of-my-life [moment] and more like a, 'Go girl, kick a** [one],'" she said. Fonda reminded fans that she's still got a lot to give and teased that she has more coming down the pike.

Per People, in a statement, SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher called Fonda "a trailblazer and an extraordinary talent." Drescher continued, "We honor Jane not only for her artistic brilliance but for the profound legacy of activism and empowerment she has created." Well said.