Jail wasn’t scary – I felt empowered, says Fonda
JANE FONDA has said a night she spent in jail after being arrested at an environmental protest was “deeply empowering”.
In the past 12 months the double Oscar winner has been arrested three times for occupying government buildings – and spent a night in a cell on a metal bed with cockroaches scuttling around.
Jane, 82, said: “I wasn’t scared. If I was black I would have been frightened but I’m a famous white woman so I didn’t think they were going to beat me up.
“In fact, I found the whole experience deeply empowering. But I knew in my heart that though it’s a great place to start, it’s not enough, so now what?”
Fonda said Greta Thunberg’s g school strikes had inspired her to start Fire Drill
Fridays, highlighting a different aspect of climate change every week. She explained: “Greta said, ‘Get out of your comfort zone,’ so I said, ‘OK’.
“I’ve found all my life that as soon as I step into activism my depression goes away. I feel better.
“I get a kick out of the fact that I am the person I am now, doing the things I am doing, because I was once considered a sex kitten.”
She has now given up “dating” and said being in her 80s was her “favourite incarnation” as she had “agency over my life”.
She said: “Now I don’t have to worry that some man I’m with might be afraid of angry women. I can do what I feel is right.”
Her book, What Can I Do? The Truth About Climate Change And How To Fix It is out now. Of third husband Ted Turner, she said: “I w was about 61 and th the marriage was not going to work and Ted said, ‘You’re not supposed to change after 60’. I said, ‘You’re in trouble if you don’t change after 60!’”
Full interview in October’s Saga Magazine