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  What
better way to mark Jane's birthday on December 21st than
with a two week special feature of the highly requested
Oprah Magazine Interview Jane made several years ago following
her divorce from Ted Turner. Jane talks about love, life,
Vietnam, regret, and looking towards the future. Our extreme
thanks to Oprah Magazine - visit her site - http://www.oprah.com/
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 Any
woman can tell you when another woman is on the verge of something
great - she just walks differently. That's why when Jane Fonda
strutted onstage at the oscars this year, clad in a strapless
gold lamé dress, gloves up past her elbows - and, oh
yes, let's not forget that short new chichi do with the flip
back - it was as if women everywhere clicked their tongues,
sat up on their couches and collectively declared: "Ooooh,
yes Jane is back!" and is she ever. Jane Fonda, the queen
of self-reinvention, has a time line of reincarnations that
stir our own memories. We know her first as Jane Fonda the
model and actress . She has been in more than 40 films and
won two Academy Awards for Best Actress - for her performance
in Klute in 1971, and for Coming Home in
1978 - and co-starred with her late father, the legendary
actor Henry Fonda, in On Golden Pond in 1981.
She's also been Jane Fonda, the activist, who is now leading
the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention -
the same fight-back Jane who protested in the Vietnam War
and made some Americans so angry that they labeled her a Communist
and slapped her with the nickname Hanoi Jane. And of course,
she's feel-the-burn Jane, the woman with the workout videos
that will always whip my behind. Now we behold her newest
transformation: She is Brave New Jane, a woman who has finally
realized her own power 0 and acknowledged faith in a higher
one. At the age of 62 (can you really look like that
at 62?) Jane says she has shed the disease to please and discovered
her voice, one she stifled while in relationships with all
three of the men (yes, even Ted) she has married: the late
French film director Roger Vadim, whom she wed in 1965 and
divorced eight years later, after having her first child,
Vanessa: activist Tom Hayden, her husband of 16 years and
the father of her son, Troy; and media tycoon Ted Turner -
from whom Jane separated last January after eight years of
marriage.
 Jane
and I meet at the Atlanta home of her daughter, Vanessa. When
Jane and Ted separated, it was here that Jane found haven,
with her daughter at her side, her 1-year-old grandson, in
her arms and the sweeping green of Grant Park outside the
front windows. She came to this neighborhood - to this nothing-fancy
purple house with white trim - to perform her most important
act yet: the one called self-definition.
It isn't just her split with Ted, so fresh and painful that
Jane still wears her wedding ring, that prompted her introspection.
What brought her her - to her daughter's home and to this
place in her life - was the choice to understand what she
calls her "first and second acts," her first 60
years, as a means to understanding her final act. There's
a lot to unravel in the early part of her life: When Jane
was 12, her mother committed suicide )as did Ted Turner's
father when Ted was 24): as a child, Jane often yearned for
the love and approval that her father often didn't know how
to express; and for more than a decade, up until her mid-thirties,
Jane battled bulimia.
Jane and I settle into her daughter's living-room - sans shoes,
sitting cross-legged, sipping Earl Grey tea and surrounded
by ceiling-high bookshelves. When we finish our conversation
- after nearly two hours, with her grandson occasionally crying
in the background - I know that I have gained a friend. What
I also know: It's because of the pain in Jane's past, however
arduous it has been, that Jane is indeed a woman on the verge
of something great. |
 Oprah:
I've read that, like me, you've always struggled with the
disease to please.
Jane Fonda: I used to walk into a party and think, Oh my God,
will I be interesting enough? Will people like me? Will I
be pretty enough? Do I fit in? Now I go into a room and think,
Do I really want to be here? Are these people I want to spend
a few hours with? It's a big shift.
O: How How did you make the shift?
JF: Hard work, growing up.
O: Are you still growing up?
JF: To do life right, you have to feel like you're growing
up until the day you die. The thing I'm proudest of is that
I have stayed curious. I have every intention, when I'm on
my deathbed, of saying, "Oh my God - I get it!"
O: Do you get it now?
JF: Three of four years after I married Ted, I thought I got
it. Wrong.
O: What did you think you had gotten?
JF: I thought I had learned how to have an intimate relationship.
And I thought I'd learned how to be happy. Everybody has issues.
For me, the challenge is intimacy, but I really didn't start
to get that until I turned 60.
O: Tell me about turning 60.
JF: As I saw my 60th birthday approaching, I thought Well,
I can do what a lot of my friends do and sleep through it.
Or I can really show up. What did 60 mean to me? I figured
I'd probably live until I'm about 90, which meant that I was
at the beginning of what I call my third act. These are my
last 30 years.
As an actress, I know how important the third act is. Third
acts makes sense of the first and second acts. You can have
first and second acts that are interesting, but you don't
know what they mean. Then a good third act pulls it all together.
And so I thought, for that to happen, I have to know what
the first and second acts were about, I have to know where
I want to end up. I knew that, because I sat by my father's
side over the long months when her was dying.
When a significant other - a spouse a parent, or someone close
you're to - is dying, it forces you to think about your life,
about what you feel about death. What I realized from my dad's
dying was that I wasn't scared of dying. But I was terrified
of regrets. I was terrified of getting to the end of my life
with a lot of Why didn't I's.
 O:
How old were you when your father died?
JF: Forty-four. My father didn't verbalize much, but I knew
he had regrets, and I don't want to. I want to have people
around me who really love me, whom I really love. And I know
that you can't collect those chips unless you've earned them
during life. What that said to me was that I had one act left
to make sure I didn't get to the end with regrets. What would
I regret most? My big regret would be if I'd never had an
intimate relationship. But if you never grow up with intimacy,
if you were never with parents who really loved each other,
and you never saw that and absorbed it as a kid, it's hard
to know how to do it.
I married certain kinds of men who weren't ever going to demand
that I show up; and I didn't realize it consciously, but I
never showed up for my kids. So I thought my challenge is
to learn how to show up.
O: I read that when you married Ted, you said, "Wherever
he goes, there I will be." did that mean you also wanted
to "show up" - emotionally, spiritually, intimately?
JF: Theoretically, that's what I wanted. But it took me a
while to realize that it also scared me to death. And I thought
I was connecting on the deepest level. Then I realized there
was further to go - and I wanted to go there. So I worked
on myself for about eight years.
O: Meaning therapy?
JF: Therapy.
O: Trying to get what?
JF: Trying to understand the fear I had of truly opening my
heart - first, you have to be whole to do that. The fears,
the voices, in my mind saying, Oh you don't want to do that,
you might get hurt, they might abandon you - those are ghost
voices from my mum and dad.
O: Isn't it true that you have to be whole because
you have to be able to trust yourself? Even if someone isn't
all you need, you have to trust yourself enough to be able
to take care of yourself.
JF: Yeah. You can't give unless you're stepping into a relationship
as a full person. That's what I was working on, and it's just
fascinating because this was all happening when I was deciding
that I wanted to devote my life to kids - primarily to girls,
because I understand them. To do that right, you have to think
about your own girlhood.
O: That's right.
JF: Girls lose their original spirit in early adolescence.
The bright-eyed, bushy tailed, powerful girls shrink down
to the size of a thimble.
O: Yeah, 10, 11, 12 - gone. We start trying to be
what everybody else wants.
JF: After you thin enough? Are you pretty enough? Do you fit
in with this group? It becomes about that. And then our female
teachers, our mothers and the other women around us - without
realizing what they're doing - send us the message that to
survive as women, you have to quiet that voice.
Virginia Woolf called it "the angel in the house."
She would sit down to write from her core, and the shadow
of the angel in the house would cast itself over her page
to say, "I'm not sure you want to say that. People aren't
going to understand that. You should be nicer, a little more
feminine."
O: A little clearer.
JF: That's right. Hide your intelligence. Hide your power.
O: Do we still that that to girls?
JF: Oh yes.
O: We don't even know we're doing it.
JF: No idea.
O: I think most women reading this would say, "No
my daughter knows she can do anything."
JF: Certainly, a lot of women who have identified with the
women's movement and what it represents in terms of owning
your voice and power have raised their daughters differently.
But for the most part, and certainly among the girls I work
with, it still happens. Even if the mother's not doing it,
the culture is.
O: Girls are dieting now at 10 and 11, because otherwise
they can't fit in. They're ostracized by their own little
friends!"
JF: They're starting with makeup so early, and it happened
to me. I participated in taking the voice of my daughter away.
I can look at photographs of her now, before early adolescence
and after adolescence, and I can see what I did to her, without
realizing what I was doing. Carol Gilligan, a professor at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote a groundbreaking
book called In a Different Voice in the eighties.
She said that women's experiences and voices did not appear
in [critical] physiological studies. Everything's based on
what Freud and Erickson analyzed. So we don't fit. And now
hearing our authentic voices means we don't know how we know.
Or we learn when we're young, and then we forget what we knew.
O: Because no part of us has been validated.
JF: Gilligan said that [women sometimes lose their voices
consciously - as a survival mechanism - and sometimes without
realizing it. And the channels through which breath and sound
pass are constricted, so the voice gets high in the head and
doesn't reveal the depth of your feelings.
O: Oh! That is soooo good!
JF: I started crying when I read that, because I remembered
my voice in my early movies. I went back and looked at the
videos - of Tall Story, Sunday in New York,
Any Wednesday - that there's my voice, all high and
thin, not revealing what I was. I went back and tracked my
growth as a woman, and my voice dropped in [the 1971 movie]
Klute. It was the first movie I made in which I identified
myself as a feminist. It was also my first Academy Award.
And there was a resonance there, because my voice was here
[from my diaphragm] |
O:
So in a way, you had become - or made a pact with the women
you played up until Klute?
JF: I did those characters well because that's where I was.
Somebody sent me an early tape of "What's my Line"
when I was the mystery guest. Vanessa could tell you - it's
shameful. My voice - it was like some other human being's.
O: You say you can look at pictures and see when you
started to take your daughter's voice away. How did you do
that?
JF: Intuitively, Vanessa has always known my strength - and
she has always seen me give it up for a man. It has been made
her very angry, which is one reason it's great that I'm here
with her. She knows that I'm getting my voice back. But that
was the main thing - seeing me stuff it in, in order to make
a relationship work. And the inherent message in that is.
"You're supposed to give up everything that matters to
be in a relationship.
O: Yourself.
JF: Give yourself up. Give your voice up. Relationship is
all. So you lose your relationship with yourself in order
to be in a
relationship with somebody else. Which untenable. It can't
work.
O: Have you given yourself up in every marriage?
JF: Yes
O: You did that with Vanessa's father, Roger Vadim?
JF: Uh-huh
O: With Tom Hayden?
JF: Willingly!
O: Willingly?
JF: Unconsciously.
O: Is that what being a wife means to you - giving
up your voice?
JF: It's what being a woman means to me - meant to me. But
I didn't think about it. That's what you want me to be? No
problem! There are many successful, famous, and strong women.
But it's in a relationship that this [behavior] shows up.
 O:
Because you take on a role?
JF: You can conquer the world in every other area, , but in
that man-woman relationship, you lose your voice. For me,
it was I had a father I just couldn't -
O: Communicate with.
JF: I'd turn myself inside out, I'd become a boy or a man,
or I'd stand on my head - just anything.
O: To please him?
JF: So he would love me.
O: So he would pay attention to you?
JF: Yes!
O: See you.
JF: See me. And he would only tell me when I was too fat or
when I was doing something bad.
O: Really?
JF: Yeah. So then you act out and become bulimic, and can't
blame that on him, but what you learn real young, is to turn
yourself inside out to keep the relationship. And that's what
I'm learning.
O: Learning to get over. Did you learn that after your mother
committed suicide? You had to start showing up for yourself
at the age of 12. Wasn't it 12?
JF: No, no, no! Age 60 is when I started learning it. I made
a movie in preparation for my 60th birthday, [at the start
of] this third act business. I went back and looked at my
movies and interviews, and I figured out what the first and
second acts had been.
O: And what was your first act about.?
JF: As a child, climbing trees was my thing. At the top of
an oak tree, I could hear triumphal music, and I could see
myself like Joan of Arc, leading the armies up the side of
the hill . I was conqueror. Then when my family moved to Greenwhich,
Connecticut, I became this itty-bitty little thing. And all
I thought about was being too fat and too shy, and the tomboy
turned into someone who was trying to figure out how to fit
in and look girlish and it was horrible. So the second part
of that first act was about being popular. Being loved. Becoming
an actress. Trying to be loved by multitudes if I couldn't
be loved by one.
My second act was about becoming and activist. That took me
closer to my core. And the third act is about finding my voice.
It's about who I really am on my own, not in relation to somebody
else or in trying to please somebody.
O: I read that when you married Ted, you thought you'd found
your soul mate.You said that he had helped you to show up
in ways that you hadn't.
JF : In many ways, that's true. We are very much alike.
O: Was it exciting to be in love again in your fifties?
JF Oh, yeah.
O: Did you believe that was possible?
JF: I've never become cynical about love. Ted is a soul mate.
I care about him. He was wonderful to me.
O: How did he help you show up in ways that you hadn't
been able to?
JF: he kept challenging me. He kept saying, "I need you
here. I need you to be intimate." And so I tried to figure
out what that meant. I went into therapy, and I worked hard
on it. And I finally learned to do it.
O: Learned to do it too much?
JF: There's no such thing. When we started off, we were on
the same level. And then I moved somewhere else. And I don't
mean somewhere better or worse, just different. The relationship
is very much in flux, but we're very close. He means the world
to me. He taught me to be happy.
O: Which is different from saying he made
you happy. He taught you to be happy.
JF: He did. In some ways, he's like my father, but
he's not dour. He's full of life and funny - in fact, he's
a riot. And I tend to be overly serious, because I'm my father's
daughter. So it was wonderful for me to be with somebody light
hearted- well, Ted's not really light hearted, he's deep -
someone who gets that much of a kick out of life.
 O:
Why are you and Ted separated?
JF: Because we changed. I changed. I changed probably
more than he did, and we need to see what that means. Are
we happier by ourselves than we were together? It's not clear.
I don't know what's going to happen.
O: What do you want to happen?
JF: I want to not lose my voice again. And being by myself,
that is to say, without a man - it's been a long time - is
allowing me to know what it feels like to live in my own skin,
to remember what I miss and don't miss about a relationship.
and I have the opportunity to do this in the home of my daughter.
O: What is that like? Did you call your daughter and
say, "I want to move in"?
JF: I said, "Vanessa, Ted and I are gonna do a trial
separation. Gosh, where am I gonna live? Um, you know I could
get a hotel room, and of course, I could live with you"
And she said, "Okay." And I said, "Oh, good!"
It was like that.
I would not have wanted to do a separation if it were not
for Vanessa living here. She and I have not had an easy go
of iy in out relationship. We're very much alike. I didn't
show up for her as much as I should have. I was a busy professional
woman. I always feel guilty when I say that, because it sounds
like "See? When those women work..." But it has
nothing to do with the work. It has to do with what happened
when I came home. And when I came home, I didn't really come
home in my head, in my heart, to her. So I paid for it later.
O: Did you raise you son and daughter differently?
JF: I did. I had a nanny with Vanessa, and I barely
breast-fed her. I was 31 when I had her, but I wasn't ready
to be a parent. I was just a little screwed up and no happy
in my marriage.
When I married Tom, Troy's father, I was more stable. In some
ways, Tom taught me to be a better parent. I breast-fed Troy
for seven months - and I showed up as a parent. Though I would
go away for long periods to make movies, when I came home,
I connected. And when Tom and I would tour nationally, we'd
take Troy with us. I just took him more than I took Vanessa.
O: Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that you're living here with
your daughter, un a real neighborhood. I thought you'd be
in a Shangri-la, little doo-da of a place.
JF: You should have seen the house Vanessa grew up in: This
is fancy by comparison! My whole life has been about opulence,
and then moving into a situation where I'm living off the
Salvation Army in one suitcase, and then getting opulence
again and moving back in to something humble.
O: So being surrounded by pretty things is not important
to you?
JF: I like comfort, yeah. I'm going to live here for the rest
of my life. I've having a loft apartment build with 20 foot
high ceilings. But it's not in Buckhead. It's downtown, in
a hood.
O: Jane Fonda in the hood!
JF: It won't be a hood for long, trust me, but I like that
I know an Atlanta that Ted doesn't know exists. My friends
are people he never would have met. And it's the Atlanta I've
come to love.
O: Is there part of you that wants to deny the privilege you
came from?
JF: No. It had to do with the Vietnam War. I was living in
France with Roger Vadim, who was a major movie star. I was
pregnant with Vanessa, I had blonde hair and I was looking
at TV from France and seeing the antiwar movement here in
the United States. The French were saying to me. "Your
country is crazy to be there. Look what you're doing - you're
bombing hospitals!" And I would say to them, "No
we're not, My father fought in World War II , and we would
never do that." But then I talked to the guys back from
Vietnam, and I realized we were doing those things.
And I was living this fun but rather empty life.
 O:
But why take that issue on Jane?
JF: I wasn't thinking in those terms. I was thinking
look at those people back in my country. I didn't want to
be in France saying my country was wrong to be in Vietnam.
I wanted to be home, to know what was going on here. So I
packed a bag and sold everything I had, and I can here and
lived in my father's servant's quarters, traveled around the
country, got into a lot of trouble.
O: How did you handle the hostility? A whole country
- to a great extent turned against you.
JF: Not a whole country. Coming home was like getting
in a warm bath - there were people who really looked at me
and asked me questions, like, "Who are you? What do you
believe in?" I made new friends, including Tom Hayden.
I met people who were living for more than just themselves.
When I first returned from France, I was about to close a
lease of a house way up on a hill in Bel Air, and then I was
driving cross-country, headed east to do Klute, and
I had an epiphany: I didn't want to be one of those people
who live on a hill and do fund-raisers, and then dole out
money. I wanted to live at the bottom of the hill, with the
people I was working with. So I canceled the lease.
O: But as a person who wanted to please - to be liked - how
did you handle been seen as a traitor?
JF: I put a callus over my heart . I felt that what we were
doing was right. And I had a strong network of friends, and
I just went ahead. Except for intimacy, I'm very brave! You
have to stay vulnerable to be open to intimacy, to keep learning
and growing. You have to be able to say, "I was wrong."
You have to accept responsibility for your mistakes and learn
from them.
O: Have you done that?
JF: I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me
in an antiaircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying
to shoot at American planes. That had nothing to do with the
context that my photograph was taken in. But it hurt so many
soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible
thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.
I wasn't thinking; I was just so bowled over by the whole
experience that I didn't realize what it would look like. |
Next:
Faith, Ted, Empowerment through exercise and more. Click Here!!! |
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