Two-time Oscar-winning actress, political activist and fitness guru Jane Fonda turns 80 on December 21.
Daughter of film superstar Henry Fonda, Jane garnered her own Hollywood acclaim, but also the ire of Vietnam War veterans, and heartfelt thanks of millions fighting flab.
She won her first Oscar in 1971 for her portrayal of a prostitute caught up in a murder mystery in “Klute” and her second in 1978 for “Coming Home,” in which she played a frustrated Army wife who falls in love with a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran – much of that film was made at a veterans hospital and it was there that Fonda came to terms with the men she had criticized as “hypocrites and liars” a decade earlier, accusing them of raping and killing innocent Vietnamese.
“I will go to my grave regretting that,” she said in a TV interview in 2005. “The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda’s daughter…sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal,” she said, calling the act, “the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine.”
She formed her own production company in the 1970s and expanded her business interests in the 1980s following the phenomenal success of “Jane Fonda’s Workout” – a series of records, books and videotapes on aerobic exercises.
Fonda can currently be seen in the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie;” the show’s fourth season is due out on January 19.
