Jane Fonda: ‘I’m 85 and feel better than ever’
Jane Fonda takes what feels like an interminably long time to mull over which decade of her life she’s felt her best. Across a 64-year career, there is, admittedly, a lot to consider. It’s to her credit that the Hollywood star of films and television shows including Barbarella, Klute, 9 to 5 and Grace and Frankie still has the good grace to reflect carefully on every answer.
“Now!” she says eventually, smiling. “I feel my best now. Is that weird? I’m... how old am I?” she laughs. “Eighty-five? I feel fine right now, actually. And I have for quite some time.”
Speaking from the Cannes Film Festival, dressed in a white shirt and a blue jacket (“both Maxmara”) with a pop of L’Oreal’s Color Riche in Audacious on her lips (“the best lipstick”), Fonda looks more than fine: she looks bright-eyed and beautiful, despite having been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in September 2022.
After a successful course of chemotherapy, the cancer is now in remission, and Fonda says she feels good. It taught her, she has said, to live with “no regrets” and to “get the things done that you want to get done”. She is thoroughly enjoying herself in Cannes, hanging out with her “pals” Kate Winslet and Eva Longoria. If she has generally slowed down her work pace, it has been hard to notice in the last few months as she has continued her Greenpeace activism weekly on social media. She became an activist in the 1970s, protesting against the Vietnam war and earning the nickname “Hanoi Jane”.
Her acting career continues too, with a new film Book Club: The Next Chapter. Currently in cinemas, the story follows four friends (played by Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen) who in later life take the rose-fuelled trip to Italy that they never managed to do when they were younger.
Can you imagine why she said yes to that assignment? Fonda acknowledges that she’s blessed, and attributes her general good health to the habits she formed when she was younger. “I’ve always stayed fit and worked out – that has always been important to me. That’s helped keep me looking OK.” She had a facelift when she was younger, which she has said she is “not proud of… I stopped because I don’t want to look distorted”.
She still exercises, even if her routines are necessarily less vigorous than the ones she so famously performed in Jane Fonda’s Workout, that game-changing 1982 fitness video that sold 17 million copies, opened up the male-dominated fitness industry to women and helped legitimise fitness as a viable business.
“The word that matters now is s-l-o-w,” she says, spelling it out. “When you’re my age, you have to work out very slowly so you don’t get hurt. You can do exactly the same things – but slowly. When I use weights, they’re lighter weights. But I still lift. I have dumbbells of different colours – beautiful pink, orange, yellow and turquoise, which makes them more pleasant to pick up.”
She doesn’t like working out, she admits.
“But I force myself to do it, because it makes a difference not just in my body, but in my brain. If I go too long without taking a long walk or working out, I tend to get depressed. I come from a long line of depressed people. If you don’t work out when you’re young, your body will forgive you. When you’re older, if you don’t keep moving, stay flexible and keep your muscles strong, it really makes a difference.”
Such as? “Getting in and out of cars. You don’t want to take ten minutes to do it because you don’t have strength in your thighs and back. Picking up a grandchild. You want to still be able to do it. When you’re driving, you want to be able to steer and look over your shoulder where you’re going.” She looks deftly over her left shoulder, as flexible as a gymnast. I tell her I already struggle to look over my shoulder, and feel like everything is crumbling.
If you want to look and feel your best in your 80s, Fonda advises that you put in the work throughout your 40s and 50s. “I started really working out in my 40s, but before I started, I felt like I was falling apart. So it’s not too late. Just start doing it.”
Fonda was born in New York in 1937. Her father was the actor Henry Fonda and her mother was a Canadian-born socialite called Frances Seymour. When Fonda was 12, her mother killed herself in a psychiatric hospital, although Fonda only discovered this later. She’s been married three times and lives in Los Angeles. In 2017, she split up with her partner of eight years, the record producer Richard Perry. He said in an interview at the time that the pair were still “extremely good friends” and explained that Fonda had “rededicated herself to activism”.
Fonda posts weekly “firefighting” posts on Instagram, highlighting an issue that matters to her, in association with Greenpeace. Her three-point plan for fitness? “Firstly, you have to stay strong, which means you have to do resistance work, whether with elastic bands or weights to keep your muscles strong, and that protects your bones. The second thing is aerobic fitness – you have to keep your heart strong, so that you can walk upstairs without getting all out of breath.” The third pillar is flexibility. “You have to stay flexible. Especially if you want to continue having sex when you’re over 50. You’ve got to be able to put your legs over your head, right? I can still do that.”
One thing she doesn’t still do is dye her hair, embracing her grey aged 83. She says she never misses her previous colour. “Not for one second. It’s so expensive to get your hair dyed, it takes hours and there’s all that chemical stuff on your head. So I’m very grateful that I’m not doing that any more. I think my hair turned out really good. You never know, when you go grey, if it’s going to be a good colour of grey, but I got lucky.”
She also believes grey hair is more versatile than people give it credit for, and says hers is tended to by her hairdresser, Jonathan Hanousek. “How I have it now is very different from how I had it two days ago. I use a shampoo that takes the yellow out – Icelandic, by L’Oreal.” An ambassador for the brand since 2005 – its oldest – she also swears by its mascara and lipstick, two parts of her beauty routine that are non-negotiable. Although now that she’s in her 80s, she says her regimen has changed in other ways. “Number one, you have to refresh your makeup more often, because it goes into the wrinkles. Number two, don’t be shiny – that accentuates the wrinkles.”
Perhaps to compensate for her grey hair, she says she’s dialled up the colour of her makeup. “As I get older, I like more colour. Although I don’t have a lot of colour on right now.” She peers at her screen. “God damn, I look so awful. Tonight [on the red carpet] I’ll go brighter and probably wear red.”
Does she enjoy dressing up at Cannes? “No. I don’t. I don’t like dressing up for anything. It’s not particular to Cannes. I like to be comfortable and what you have to put on to walk the red carpet usually isn’t very comfortable. Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. You’ve got a lot of Spanx pulling you in. When you get older, you can’t wear high heels any more – you can fall over in them. The young ones wear huge heels, it looks good. I used to do that. But not any more.”
After our conversation, Fonda takes to the Cannes red carpet in her chic flat pumps, black cigarette pants and black sequin overlay by Ami Paris. After presenting the Palme d’Or to French director Justine Triet and realising Triet had forgotten to take her award certificate, Fonda lobs it at her back, in a moment that quickly goes viral. “Jane Fonda has officially stopped giving f---s,” one Twitter user comments.
Then again, did she ever?
Her long-standing history of activism proves she’s never played by Hollywood’s rules: whether backing the Civil Rights Movement, championing women’s rights or marching against climate change, Fonda has always been willing to take action. Few people celebrate their 82nd birthday by being arrested on a protest: fewer still write a book (2020’s What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action) describing said arrest as “the best birthday party ever”.
A few days after we speak, she’s in trouble again, this time for saying white men are ‘to blame’ for the climate crisis. Perhaps, rather than not giving any f---s, Fonda has simply earned the right to speak her mind. It’s why, at 85, she’s so selective about her work projects.
“The script has to be good. The characters have to be interesting. There has to be some arc to the character so that she moves from one place to another and isn’t static. And you have to believe that the story it’s telling has value, and that people are going to want to see it.”
If Jane Fonda is involved, her fans are always going to want to see it.
