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Jane Fonda

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Jane Seymour Fonda (born New York, New York, December 21, 1937) is an Academy Award winning, and sometimes notorious, American actress who is the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and his second wife, New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw (formerly Mrs. George Tuttle Brokaw). Her mother committed suicide by cutting her throat in 1950, when Jane was 12.

Acting career

In 1954, Jane joined her father on stage with the Omaha Community Theatre in a production of The Country Girl. She met Lee Strasberg in 1958, and joined his Actors Studio. Fonda's screen debut in the frivolous Tall Story in 1960 did not presage the more serious work that would become her trademark. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1971 for Klute and in 1978 for Coming Home, and was nominated five more times.

Opposition to the Vietnam War

Fonda became involved in political activism during the time of the Vietnam War, and became the target of hatred from many Americans for her visit to Hanoi where she advocated opposition to the war. During this visit she acquired the nickname Hanoi Jane, comparing her to Tokyo Rose.

Although the war was largely protested at home by this time, and many Americans were against the war, her actions were widely perceived as over the top.

When Jane Fonda was honored by Barbara Walters in 1999 as one of the 100 great women of the century, sentiments regarding Fonda's actions in Vietnam were rekindled. Rumors that Fonda handed over information about US soldiers to the Viet Cong are provably untrue.

Fonda posed for a picture at an anti-aircraft battery and participated in several radio broadcasts. She also visited American prisoners of war who assured her that they had neither been tortured nor brainwashed. Fonda believed these claims and relayed them to the American public. However, several soldiers later said that they had been tortured to make these statements or to even meet with Fonda, to which Fonda replied: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed."

In 1988, Fonda apologized for her actions to the American POWs and their families. Fonda continues to participate in peace activism, in particular regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recently, her name has been used as a disparaging epithet against John Kerry by Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who called Kerry a "Jane Fonda Democrat".

In 2004, a campaign to link Democratic Party candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War policies with Fonda occurred. A doctored photograph made the rounds of the Internet, showing Kerry and Fonda speaking at a Vietnam Veterans Against the War program. In fact, Fonda did not attend the event. There is, however, an undoctored photo of Fonda and Kerry attending a similar event, although the two are merely sitting in the audience, several rows apart.

Later career

In the 1980s, Fonda reinvented herself in a series of workout videos.

Personal life

Jane Fonda has been married three times. Her first husband (1965-73) was French film director Roger Vadim (1928-2000) with whom she had a daughter, Vanessa, named for Vanessa Redgrave. Her second husband (1973-1990) was author and politician Tom Hayden, by whom she has a son, Troy Garity, and an adopted daughter. Her third husband (1991-2001) was American cable-television tycoon Ted Turner.

Academy Awards and Nominations

All for Best Actress unless noted

Filmography

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