Jane Fonda: 'Only now, at 80, am I fulfilling my potential'

Actress, activist, fitness icon and octogenarian Jane Fonda. Photo / Getty Images

Of all the notables one might expect to open a documentary about Jane Fonda - actress, activist, fitness icon, Hollywood royalty and, now, inspiringly in-demand octogenarian - Richard Nixon probably wouldn't feature high on the list.

"What in the world is the matter with Jane Fonda?" the then-president's voice is heard asking on a White House tape from 1971, as Fonda was busy recasting herself in the role of anti-Vietnam War protester. "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."

But Nixon's unexpected appearance and dismissive, chauvinistic comments set the tone for Jane Fonda in Five Acts, made by HBO and written and directed by Susan Lacy. "You know, right away, that this is not a film about a movie star," says Fonda. "This is going to be different."

Fonda and I meet in a hotel room in Beverly Hills. In her splashy-print top, with her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, it is almost impossible to accept she is 80 years old. She is rail-thin and wrinkle-free, though without the terrifyingly frozen look of devotees of the surgeon's knife.

But, quite aside from her looks, it's her energy that is tangibly youthful - she is passionate, vigorous, laser-sharp.

She pounces hungrily on a chocolate-chip cookie, a delight to see after her revelations in the documentary about living on one hard-boiled egg a day when in the grips of the eating disorders that dogged her until her early 40s.

We are well used to Fonda as the mistress of reinvention. From sex symbol Fonda in the Barbarella years, to serious actress Fonda, the double Oscar-winner (for Klute and Coming Home) to activist Fonda in the 70s, workout Fonda in the 80s, and philanthropist Fonda in the 90s.

Jane Fonda in Grace and Frankie.

The documentary's structure, however, slices things up differently, with each of the first four of the five "acts" named after the significant men in her life: her father, Henry ("I grew up in the shadow of a national monument," she says in the film. "He was the face of the America that people wanted to believe in"), followed by her three husbands, French director Roger Vadim ("as soon as he walked in, I felt unsafe," she says of their first meeting. "He felt predatory"), political activist Tom Hayden, and media mogul Ted Turner.

The narrative device is that Fonda defined herself almost entirely by the men in her life, all of whom sought to control her. Until her fifth act, fittingly titled Jane.

"I didn't have very much confidence, I didn't take myself seriously, and I thought that if I was with those kinds of men that I could be somebody," she tells me thoughtfully. "They were all so brilliant, and I thought they could teach me things and take me farther than I had ever gone.

"I think I'm maybe just starting now to live up to my potential," she adds. "I'm a late bloomer, but you know, we live 34 years longer than we used to, so it's not so bad being a late bloomer."

Fonda is certainly demonstrating admirable longevity. Alongside Grace and Frankie, her Netflix comedy co-starring Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, now into its fourth successful series, she stars in one of this year's hit films, Book Club, alongside Diane Keaton and Mary Steenburgen.

"Older women are the fastest-growing demographic in the world. And movies and television, it's a business," she says, matter-of-factly.

The revealing, sometimes raw documentary was filmed over a total of 21 hours and features contributions from her son, Troy Garity, and her adopted daughter, Mary "Lulu" Williams, her close friends Lily Tomlin and Robert Redford, plus two of her ex-husbands, Hayden (who died in 2016) and Turner. Vadim, who is labelled a charismatic, compulsive gambler and alcoholic in the film, declined to take part. It devotes much of the almost 2½ hours to Fonda's own reflections on her vulnerabilities and missteps.

Jane Fonda answers media prior to give a master class, at the film institute La Cinematheque Francaise, in Paris. Photo / AP

She was, she says today, surprised by the response to her 2005 autobiography My Life So Far. "A lot of people identify with the various struggles that I've had," she says. "Issues with parents, issues with eating disorders, issues with men, issues with self-confidence. And so I felt that, if these things could be brought to a broader audience, that it could be informative and helpful to other people."

Nor does the film shy away from her self-confessed regrets, including over the war that she believes was the first major turning point in her life. "Prior to my becoming an anti-war activist, I had lived an eventful life, an interesting life, but a meaningless life," she tells me.

"I was a pretty girl who made movies and was kind of hedonistic. And when I decided to throw in my lot with the anti-war movement, everything shifted. The way I looked at the world the people I was drawn to, what interested me - everything changed.

"It took me until my mid-30s to get woke," she says, employing the current parlance. "But I think if I'd been 20 and Trump had been elected, I would have been woke earlier. I'm proud that I went to Vietnam when I did, and I'm proud that the bombing of the dykes stopped," she says. "But I'm sorry that I was thoughtless enough to sit on that gun at that time, and the message that that sent to the guys who were there, and their families." As she admits in the documentary: "I will go to my grave regretting that."

Today, she is no less "woke" - she will soon be travelling to Michigan with Lily Tomlin "to be a voice for tipped workers, for people who work in restaurants - we're fighting for one fair wage", including for fair wages for farm workers and domestic workers. "I try to use my celebrity in a good way," she says.

And this week, she went back to the swing state to work with minority voting efforts ahead of the forthcoming midterms.

"The elections on November 6 are the most important elections of my lifetime," she said last week. "So much depends on what happens."

She's far less bothered about what the documentary portrays of her than what it might do for others. "I hope it will encourage people to become active," she says.

"There's a gangster running the country, and we need an honest, right-thinking non-gangster to lead. And it's going to take every single person in this country to make that happen."