JANE FONDA
Ben je ook zo’n fan van Frankie & Grace (helaas pas begin volgend jaar het 6e seizoen). Dus toen ik dit interview met de 81! jarige Jane Fonda in de nieuwe Vogue UK las, moest ik het echt even met jullie delen. Lees je even mee?
Jane Fonda On Why Now, In Her Eighties, She Finally Feels Whole. The word legend is tossed around so freely these days, but where to begin with Jane Fonda, asks Giles Hattersley in the May Non-Issue Issue of British Vogue.
Few people – certainly few actresses – have a legacy as jaw-dropping as Jane Fonda’s. Whatever the era, whatever her age, Fonda has set the zeitgeist. Why? Firstly, she sits at the rare intersection of celebrity and fierce intelligence. When Vogue joins her for an afternoon in Hollywood, topics range from gender prejudice to whether growing older is harder when you’re beautiful.
On the former, she says openly, “My mother killed herself, so I saw women as kind of being on the losing side. I was so conditioned to identify with men in every possible way. When I was married to Roger Vadim, one day one of his friends said, ‘God, Jane, you’re just like us’ – and I took it as a compliment!”
“For the bulk of my life, I would say up until my seventies, I spent my life like a double image, like a double exposure,” she continues. “As an adolescent, in order to fit in, I made sure no one – especially boys or men – could see who I really was; that I could get really angry, that I could not be pretty, that I could be tough. I went through life not whole. And when I left Ted [Fonda’s second husband], I could feel myself moving back into myself. That is the main thing about the third act as I’m living it. I am no longer a double image.”
Feminism and romantic unions are now mutually exclusive for her. “I had several serious relationships after [Ted], but I can’t…” she trails off. “That is my failing. I realise I can never overcome it. That when I’m with a man, I give up myself.”
Now 81, Fonda wants to stress that nothing in your eighties is straightforward. “I’ve had a lot of cancer,” she says, suddenly. “I was a sun-worshipper. When I have a day off, I frequently go to my skin doctor and have things cut off me by a surgeon.” She recalls the 2016 Golden Globes, where she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Youth: “I get out of the car and I have the strange white dress with all the ruffles? That’s because I’d just had a mastectomy and I had to cover my bandages.” Where is she with her diagnosis now? “It’s an ongoing process,” she says. “So there’s that.”
Osteoporosis is also an underlying health concern. “The fact that I hurt a lot – my body hurts – is a surprise to me, and it’s not because of all that working out,” she shares. “It’s genetic. My father [Henry] had it, my brother [Peter] had it. Your cartilage disappears and then it’s bone on bone, and then ‘ow’. But we live in a time where you can just get a new one.” (She’s had both hips replaced already, and is about to have her second knee done. She loved it when she got her first replacement knee a few years ago.) “I was just starting a new relationship and I had to be able to kneel.”
Her parting sentiment is not one of gloominess about ageing, but pure happiness. “I didn’t think I’d ever ever live this long – or feel that I’m whole or getting whole. I feel very intentional about realising that it’s up to me how this last part of my life goes.”
En wil je weten wat Jane in haar tas (rugzak heef) kijk dan even hier.
