It can be said that Jane Fonda he did everything in his life. She is an actress, activist and feminist, she has been married three times, to Ted Turner, Tom Hayden and Roger Vadim. In the ’80s she fell in love with aerobics so much that she opened a gym in Beverly Hills and created her own Jane Fonda’s Workout, which helped the home fitness and VHS tape industries explode. She even went to prison, the first time at 32, in 1970 for her protests against the Vietnam War, when she was nicknamed Hanoi Janeand more recently, in 2019, for his Fire Drill Fridays, when every Friday, in his red coat, he marched towards Capitol Hill, to underline the urgency of dealing with the climate crisis. And while he was in cell, she took the opportunity to continue with her squat routine to keep fit, a format that he then also shared on Tik Tok.
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With a sense of humor, open and casual, Jane Fonda does not fear any judgment. But it wasn’t always like this. In the past, as she herself told Vanity Fair some time ago, she suffered from bulimia, which she defined as “wanting to please syndrome”. She always wanted to be someone else, but with age this mania for acceptance passed.
I spoke to her via Zoom, the day after she appeared, splendid, on the red carpet of the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival, and we had eight minutes of conversation, I could only ask her six questions, approved by her management and L’Oréal Paris , a brand for which he has been ambassador since 2005 and which has been the official sponsor of the Festival for 27 years. But she still warmed up to the issues that are closest to her heart. Through the computer screen I felt her energy frequency become higher when we talked about the climate crisis, about giving women a voice and when she freed herself from Hollywood beauty standards.
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You are an actress, but also an activist and a feminist. Can you tell us how Hollywood beauty standards have influenced your life?
«They made me unhappy. I couldn’t stand them. I started as an actress taking lessons with Lee Strasberg, the teacher of the famous actors, and I liked being in a small class where everyone took themselves seriously, and where no one cared about their appearance. Then suddenly I landed in Hollywood and when, after my first film, I became a star, everything depended on my appearance and makeup, on my parents, on my body and I hated it. And I swore to myself that I would never return to Hollywood again. I moved to Broadway and it was less bad there because I was doing theater. But I had to earn a living and I retraced my steps. It took me a long time to make peace with the beauty standards of the film industry. I hated focusing on my appearance. I didn’t think I was pretty, It really made me very uncomfortable. As soon as I started training and studying hair and makeup, working with real professionals, I started feeling better. Because I knew I looked better and took better care of myself. Now that I’m 86, it’s different, if I don’t do it, if I don’t wear makeup well, it’s a problem. At my age you have to be really looked afterI have a fantastic team, there are those who do my hair, those who do my make-up and that way I make a good impression, so it’s no longer a process that I hate, because I just do it.”
What helped her resist in this environment where she was watched and judged?
«Pretend to be invisible. Do you know the L’Oréal slogan “Because you are worth it”? It didn’t become real to me until I was sixty. I’m a late bloomer, I’m a late bloomer. Everything came late for me, and that’s fine, as long as you don’t miss the flower show.”
