Author: Kathryn Shattuck / Source: New York Times
“What in the world is the matter with Jane Fonda?” President Richard M. Nixon asks in a recording from Sept. 19, 1971, at a time when Ms. Fonda was vehemently protesting the Vietnam War. “I feel so sorry for Henry Fonda, who’s a nice man. She’s a great actress.
She looks pretty. But boy, she’s … often on the wrong track.”So begins “Jane Fonda in Five Acts,” debuting Sept. 24 on HBO, in which the director Susan Lacy peels back the layers of this formidable actress and activist in a way that might surprise: by focusing primarily on the men in her life.
It certainly surprised Ms. Fonda.
“I had no idea how she was going to structure it, and when it opened on the tape of Nixon’s voice, I just thought that was so brilliant,” she said, recalling how she had initially told Ms. Lacy, ‘I don’t want a movie star documentary, because if you’re going to do a real documentary about me, there’s a lot more to it than just my career.’”
Ms. Fonda gets her own act, of course. But so does her father — the emotionally remote “national monument,” as she calls him, who set the stage for his daughter’s agonizing doubt about her body and abilities. As do her three former husbands:— the French director Roger Vadim, the political activist Tom Hayden and the media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner.
“Jane Fonda in Five Acts” moves from Ms. Fonda’s painful childhood, including her father’s affair and her mother’s suicide, to chart her trajectory from an unambitious ingénue to an Oscar winner for “Klute” and “Coming Home.
” It also grapples with what she has called her biggest regret: her 1972 visit to North Vietnam, which resulted in a photo of her seated on an antiaircraft gun, earning her the nickname Hanoi Jane and polarizing the public still.These days, when she isn’t lording it over her friend Lily Tomlin in their Netflix comedy, “Grace and Frankie,” or plotting a possible sequel to “9 to 5,” Ms. Fonda, 80, is fixated on getting out the vote for the midterm elections.
“I’ve been around a long time, and this is the most important election that I have ever experienced,” she said during a telephone interview from Los Angeles, in which she spoke about coming into her own, her current passions and her next acts.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Your public persona is that of a fiercely independent woman with little need for male support. Did you question Ms. Lacy’s decision to define you by your men?
No, because for a good part of my life, I was very much defined by the…
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