Jane Fonda’s re-entry
‘Peace,’ positive vibes,
NEW YORK — Jane Fonda has been delayed by a slight wardrobe malfunction.
Nothing to alert the FCC about, mind you. Just a matter of a knit top that refuses to close properly.
A hotel bellman comes to the rescue with a safety pin. And soon enough, the age-defying 74-year-old who is a still-working screen legend and still-flexing fitness queen enters the room looking fabulously pulled together and impossibly slim even in white slacks.
In the past, she might have shrugged off such a minor fashion faux pas. But image is more important than ever to Fonda. The onetime political firebrand and war protester who is still haunted by a 40-year-old photo of her smiling atop a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft weapon learned the hard way after decades of enduring the hateful nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
“Only now am I paying attention to how I come across, how I look and how I am in the world,” says Fonda, who resembles a female version of father Henry, the revered star of The
“Only now am I paying attention to how I come across, how I look and how I am in the world.”
Grapes of Wrath who died in 1982 at 77, shortly after he won his lone Oscar
for their joint effort, On Golden Pond.
Her mission today is one of promotion, not protest, as the actress reenergizes her comeback that began
with the 2005 hit Monster-in-Law after a 15-year break, during which she married and divorced her third husband, billionaire media mogul Ted Turner. First up is the just-opened Peace, Love & Misunder
standing (expanding to more theaters this week). She plays Grace, a gray-haired, pot-growing, hippie granny who reconciles with her estranged, uptight-lawyer daughter, Diane (Catherine Keener), in the tiedyed haven of Woodstock, N.Y.
“If you want to really work and you’re my age, you have to let it be known,” says Fonda, a two-time Oscar winner for 1971’s Klute and 1978’s
Coming Home. “And let it be seen that you are serious about it and you are really back. I left the business not at the most opportune time. I was just turning 50. And to come back in my