Jane Fonda Becomes a Born Again Christian

Photograph: Richard Phibbs

This interview appeared in the July/August outcome of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Whatsoever adult female can tell when another woman is on the verge of something slap-up—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 upward by her elbows—and, oh yes, let'southward not forget that brusk new chichi practise with the flip in back—it was equally if women everywhere clicked their tongues, saturday upwardly on their couches and collectively alleged: "Ooooh, yes—Jane is dorsum!" And is she e'er. Jane Fonda, the queen of cocky-reinvention, has a fourth dimension line of reincarnations that stir our ain 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 Habitation in 1978—and co-starred with her belatedly father, the legendary actor Henry Fonda, in On Golden Pond in 1981. She's also Jane Fonda the activist, who is now leading the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention—the same fight-back Jane who protested the Vietnam War and fabricated some Americans so angry that they labeled her a Communist and slapped her with the nickname Hanoi Jane. And, of form, she's experience-the-burn Jane, the woman with the workout videos that volition e'er whip my behind.

Now nosotros behold her newest transformation: She is Dauntless New Jane, a woman who has finally realized her own power—and acknowledged faith in a higher ane. At the age of 62 (can you actually 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, fifty-fifty Ted) she has married: the belatedly French film director Roger Vadim, whom she wed in 1965 and divorced 8 years afterwards, after having her first child, Vanessa; activist Tom Hayden, her husband of sixteen years and the father of her son, Troy; and media tycoon Ted Turner—from whom Jane separated last January after eight years of wedlock.

Jane and I run across at the Atlanta home of her girl, Vanessa. When Jane and Ted separated, it was here that Jane constitute a haven, with her girl at her side, her 1-twelvemonth-old grandson in her artillery and the sweeping green of Grant Park outside the front windows. She came to this neighborhood—to this zip-fancy regal house with white trim—to perform her most of import act yet: the one called self-definition.

It isn't just her split with Ted, so fresh and painful that Jane-notwithstanding wears her nuptials ring, that prompted her introspection. What brought her here—to her daughter's home and to this place in her life—was the choice to understand what she calls her "beginning and 2nd acts," her first 60 years, every bit a means to understanding her last act. In that location's a lot to unravel in the early part of her life: When Jane was 12, her female parent committed suicide (as did Ted Turner'southward father when Ted was 24); as a child, Jane yearned for the dearest 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 past ceiling-high bookshelves. When we stop our conversation—after most ii hours, with her grandson occasionally crying in the groundwork—I know that I have gained a friend. What I also know: Information technology's because of the pain in Jane'south past, however backbreaking it has been, that Jane is indeed a adult female on the verge of something slap-up.

Oprah: I've read that, similar me, you've ever struggled with the illness to delight.

Jane: I used to walk into a political party and recollect, "Oh, my God, volition I be interesting plenty? Will people like me? Will I be pretty enough? Do I fit in?" Now I go into a room and think, "Do I actually want to be here? Are these people I want to spend a few hours with?" It'southward a big shift.

Oprah: How did you brand the shift?

Jane: Hard work. Growing upwardly.

Oprah: Are you all the same growing up?

Jane: To do life right, you take to feel similar yous're growing upwardly 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!"

Oprah: Practice y'all get information technology at all now?

Jane: Iii or four years after I married Ted, I thought I got information technology. Wrong.

Oprah: What did you recall you had gotten?

Jane: I thought I had learned how to take an intimate relationship. And I thought I'd learned how to be happy. Everybody has issues. For me, the challenge is intimacy, merely I really didn't start to get that until I turned 60.

Oprah: Tell me about turning 60.

Jane: Every bit I saw my 60th birthday budgeted, I idea, Well, I can do what a lot of my friends do and sleep through information technology. Or I can really show up. What did 60 mean to me? I figured I'd probably live until I'thousand about 90, which meant that I was at the beginning of what I call my third deed. These are my terminal 30 years.

As an actress, I know how important the third act is. Third acts make sense of the first and second acts. You can have get-go and 2nd acts that are interesting, merely you don't know what they hateful. And so a skillful third act pulls it all together. So I thought, for that to happen, I have to know what the outset and second acts were almost, and I take to know where I want to end up. I knew that, because I saturday by my father's side over the long months when he was dying.

When a significant other—a spouse, a parent or someone you're close to—is dying, information technology forces you to think virtually your life, about what you feel nearly expiry. 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'southward.

Oprah: How old were you when your father died?

Jane: Forty-four. My begetter didn't verbalize much, but I knew he had regrets, and I don't desire to. I desire to have people effectually me who really love me, whom I really dearest. And I know that yous tin can't collect those fries unless you've earned them during your life. What that said to me was that I had one human activity left to brand sure I didn't get to the end with regrets. What would I regret the most? My big regret would be if I'd never had an intimate human relationship. But if you never grew 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, only I never showed up for my kids. So I thought, "My challenge is to learn how to testify up."

Oprah: I read that when you married Ted, you said, "Wherever he goes, at that place I will be." Did that mean you also wanted to "bear witness up"—emotionally, spiritually, intimately?

Jane: 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 in that location was farther to go—and I wanted to go there. So I worked on myself for near eight years.

Oprah: Meaning therapy?

Jane: Therapy.

Oprah: Trying to go to what?

Jane: Trying to understand the fearfulness I had of truly opening my heart—offset, you accept to be whole to exercise that. The fears, the voices in my heed maxim, "Oh, you don't desire to do that, you might get injure, they might abandon you—"those are ghost voices from my mom and dad.

Oprah: Isn't it truthful that you have to exist whole because you have to be able to trust yourself? Even if someone isn't all you need, you accept to trust yourself enough to be able to take care of yourself.

Jane: 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'southward just fascinating considering this was all happening when I was deciding that I wanted to devote my life to kids—primarily to girls, considering I understand them. To exercise that right, yous have to think about your own girlhood.

Oprah: That's right.

Jane: Girls lose their original spirit in early adolescence. The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, powerful girls shrink downward to the size of a thimble.

Oprah: Yeah, 10, 11, 12—gone. We commencement trying to be what everybody else wants.

Jane: Are y'all thin plenty? Are y'all pretty enough? Exercise you lot fit in with this little group? It becomes near that. And then our female teachers, our mothers and the other women around us—without realizing what they're doing—transport usa the message that to survive as a woman, you have to quiet that voice. Virginia Woolf called it "the angel in the firm." She would sit downwards to write from her core, and the shadow of the angel in the house would cast itself over her page to say, "I'm non sure you desire to say that. People aren't going to empathise that. Yous should exist nicer, a little more feminine."

Oprah: A little cuter.

Jane: That's correct. Hide your intelligence. Hide your ability.

Oprah: Do nosotros still do that to girls?

Jane: Oh, yes.

Oprah: Nosotros don't even know we're doing it.

Jane: No thought.

Oprah: I retrieve most women reading this would say, "No, my girl knows she can practise anything."

Jane: Certainly, a lot of women who have identified with the women's movement and what it represents in terms of owning your vox and power accept raised their daughters differently. But for the most part, and certainly amongst the girls I work with, it all the same happens. Even if the mother's not doing it, the culture around us is.

Oprah: Girls are dieting now at ten and 11, because otherwise they can't fit in. They're ostracized by their own little friends!

Jane: They're starting with makeup then early, and it happened to me. I participated in taking the voice of my daughter away. I can await at photographs of her now, earlier early adolescence and later adolescence, and I can run across what I did to her, without realizing what I was doing. Carol Gilligan, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Teaching, wrote a groundbreaking book called In a Different Voice in the eighties. She said that women'south experiences and voices did not appear in [critical] psychological studies. Everything's based on what Freud and Erickson analyzed. So we don't fit. And non hearing our authentic voices means nosotros don't know what nosotros know. Or we learn when nosotros're immature, and so we forget what we knew.

Oprah: Considering no part of us has been validated.

Jane: 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, and then the vocalization gets high in the head and doesn't reveal the depth of your feelings.

Oprah: Oh! That is soooo good!

Jane: I started crying when I read that, because I remembered my voice in my early movies. I went dorsum and looked at the videos—of Tall Story, Sunday in New York, Whatever Wednesday—and there's my voice, all high and thin, not revealing whatsoever of what I was. I went back and tracked my growth as a woman, and my voice dropped in [the 1971 film] Klute. It was the offset-movie I made in which I identified myself as a feminist. It was also my first Academy Award. And there was a resonance in that location, considering my voice was hither [from my diaphragm].

Oprah: So in a way you lot had become—or made a pact with—the women you played up until Klute?

Jane: 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'due south shameful. My voice—information technology was like some other homo being's.

Oprah: You say you lot can look at pictures and see when you started to take your daughter'southward voice away. How did you do that?

Jane: Intuitively, Vanessa has e'er known my strength—and she has always seen me requite it upwards for a man. It has fabricated her very aroused, which is one reason it's not bad that I'one thousand here with her. She knows that I'm getting my vocalization back. Simply that was the master thing—her seeing me stuff it in, in club to make a relationship piece of work. And the inherent message in that is, "You're supposed to give upward everything that matters to exist in a relationship."

Oprah: Yourself.

Jane: Give yourself upwards. Give your voice up. Relationship is all. So you lose your relationship with yourself in order to exist in a relationship with somebody else. Which is untenable. Information technology can't work.

Oprah: Have you given yourself upwards in every marriage?

Jane: Yes.

Oprah: You did that with Vanessa'southward father, Roger Vadim?

Jane: Uh-huh.

Oprah: With Tom Hayden?

Jane: Willingly!

Oprah: Willingly?

Jane: Unconsciously.

Oprah: Is that what being a wife means to you— giving up your vox?

Jane: Information technology's what being a woman means to me—meant to me. But I didn't think nigh information technology. That'southward what you desire me to be? No problem! At that place are many successful, famous and strong women. Just it'south in a relationship that this [beliefs] shows up.

Oprah: Because yous take on a function?

Jane: You can conquer the globe in every other area, but in that man-adult female relationship, yous lose your vocalization. For me, it was that I had a father I merely couldn't—

Oprah: Communicate with.

Jane: I'd turn myself inside out, I'd become a boy or a man, or I'd stand up on my caput—just anything.

Oprah: To please him?

Oprah: So he would pay attending to you?

Jane: Yes!

Oprah: Meet you.

Jane: See me. And he would just tell me when I was too fat or when I was doing something bad.

Oprah: Really?

Jane: Yeah. So then you lot act out and become bulimic, and I tin can't blame that on him, only what yous learn, real young, is to turn yourself inside out to go on the relationship. And that'south what I'm learning.

Oprah: Learning to get over. Did you learn that afterward your mother committed suicide? Yous had to first showing upwards for yourself at the age of 12. Wasn't it 12?

Jane: No, no, no! Age 60 is when I started learning information technology. I made a pic in training for my 60th birthday, [at the commencement of] this tertiary-act concern. I went back and looked at my movies and interviews, and I figured out what the first and second acts had been.

Oprah: And what was your starting time act about?

Jane: As a child, climbing trees was my thing. At the top of an oak tree, I could hear triumphal music, and I could run into myself, like Joan of Arc, leading armies up the side of a hill. I was a conqueror. And so when my family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, I became this itty-bitty little matter. And all I idea about was being as well fat and too shy, and the tomboy turned into someone who was trying to effigy out how to fit in and expect girlish, and it was horrible. So the 2nd part of that first human action was nearly existence pop. Being loved. Becoming an extra. Trying to exist loved by multitudes if I couldn't be loved by ane.

My 2nd human action was nigh becoming an activist. That took me closer to my core. And the third act is about finding my voice. It'due south about who I really am on my own, not in relation to somebody else or in trying to please somebody.

Oprah: I read that when you lot married Ted, you thought you'd institute your soul mate. You said that he had helped you to show upwards in ways that y'all hadn't.

Jane: In many means, that's truthful. We are very much alike.

Oprah: Was it heady to be in love once more in your fifties?

Jane: Oh, yeah.

Oprah: Did you believe that was possible?

Jane: I've never become cynical well-nigh love. Ted is a soul mate. I care virtually him. He was wonderful for me.

Oprah: How did he assist you evidence up in ways that you hadn't been able to?

Jane: He kept challenging me. He kept saying, "I demand you here. I need yous to be intimate." And so I tried to effigy out what that meant. I went into therapy, and I worked hard on it. And I finally learned to practice information technology.

Oprah: Learned to do it also much?

Jane: There's no such thing. When we started off, we were on the same level. And and then I moved somewhere else. And I don't mean [somewhere] better or worse, only different. The human relationship is very much in flux, [only] we're very shut. He ways the world to me. He taught me to be happy.

Oprah: Which is different from saying he fabricated yous happy. He taught yous to be happy.

Jane: He did. In some ways, he's like my male parent, simply he'south not dour. He's full of life and funny—in fact, he's a riot. And I tend to exist overly serious, because I'm my male parent'south daughter. And so information technology was wonderful for me to be with somebody lighthearted—well, Ted'due south not really lighthearted, he's deep—someone who gets that much of a kick out of life.

Oprah: Why are you and Ted separated?

Jane: Because nosotros changed. I inverse. I changed probably more than than he did, and we need to see what that ways. Are we happier by ourselves than we were together? It'due south not clear. I don't know what's going to happen.

Oprah: What do yous want to happen?

Jane: I desire to not lose my voice once 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 similar-to live in my ain peel, to remember what I miss and don't miss nigh a-relationship. And I have the opportunity to do this in the dwelling house of my daughter.

Oprah: What is that similar? Did y'all phone call your daughter up and say, "I want to movement in"?

Jane: 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 accept wanted to exercise a separation if it were not for Vanessa living hither. She and I have not had an easy go of information technology in our relationship. We're very much alike. I didn't show upwards for her equally much as I should have. I was a busy professional adult female. I always feel guilty when I say that, considering it sounds like, "See? When those women work..." Only it has nothing to do with the work. Information technology has to practise with what happened when I came domicile. And when I came home, I didn't really come dwelling house in my caput, in my heart, to her. And so I paid for it later.

Oprah: Did yous raise your daughter and son differently?

Jane: I did. I had a nanny with Vanessa, and I barely chest-fed her. I was 31 when I had her, but I wasn't ready to be a parent. I was simply a piddling screwed up and non happy in my wedlock. When I married Tom, Troy'south begetter, I was more stable. In some ways, Tom taught me to be a better parent. I breast-fed Troy for vii months—and I showed upwardly equally a parent. Though I would go away for long periods to make movies, when I came abode, I continued. And when Tom and I would bout nationally, we'd take Troy with us. I just took him more than I took Vanessa.

Oprah: Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that you're living here with your daughter, in a existent neighborhood. I thought you'd exist in a Shangri-la, little doo-da of a place.

Jane: You should have seen the business firm Vanessa grew up in: This is fancy by comparison! My whole life has been about having opulence, and then moving into a situation where I'm living off the Salvation Army in ane suitcase, and so getting opulence again and and then moving into something apprehensive. I'chiliad proud of that.

Oprah: So beingness surrounded by pretty things is non important to y'all?

Jane: I similar comfort, yep. I'm not going to live here for the rest of my life. I'1000 having a loft apartment built with twenty-foot-high ceilings. But it's not in Buckhead. It'due south in downtown, in a hood.

Oprah: Jane Fonda in the hood!

Jane: 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 take met. And it's the Atlanta that I've come to honey.

Oprah: Is in that location role of you that wants to deny the privilege you came from?

Jane: No. Information technology has to do with the Vietnam War. I was living in France with Roger Vadim, who was a major movie star. I was meaning with Vanessa, I had blonde hair and I was looking at Goggle box from France and seeing the antiwar move hither in the United States. The French were saying to me, "Your country is crazy to be in that location. Look what you're doing—you're bombing hospitals!" And I would say to them, "No we're not. My father fought in World State of war Two, and we would never do that." But then I talked to the guys back from Vietnam, and I realized nosotros were doing those things. And I was living this fun—only rather empty—life.

Oprah: Just why take that outcome on, Jane?

Jane: I wasn't thinking in those terms. I was thinking, "Await at those people back in my country." I didn't want to be in France saying my country was incorrect to be in Vietnam. I wanted to be abode, to know what was going on here. So I packed a bag and sold everything I had, and I came here and lived in my male parent's servant quarters, traveled around the country, got into a lot of trouble.

Oprah: How did you handle the hostility? A whole country—to a corking extent—turned against y'all.

Jane: Not a whole country. Coming dwelling house was like getting in a warm bath—there were people who really looked at me and asked me questions, like, "Who are you lot? What do you believe in?" I made new friends, including Tom Hayden. I met people who were living for more just themselves. When I first returned from France, I was about to shut on a charter of a house mode up on a hill in Bel-Air, and then I was driving cross-state, headed due east to do Klute, and I had an epiphany: I didn't want to be i of those people who alive on a loma and practise fund-raisers, and and then dole out money. I wanted to live at the bottom of a colina, with the people I was working with. Then I canceled the lease.

Oprah: But as a person who wanted to delight—to exist liked—how did you handle being seen equally a traitor?

Jane: 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 alee. Except for intimacy, I'chiliad very brave! Yous take to stay vulnerable to be open to intimacy, to go on learning and growing. You have to be able to say, "I was incorrect." You take to have responsibility for your mistakes and larn from them.

Oprah: Have you washed that?

Jane: 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 practice with the context that photograph was taken in. Merely it hurt so many soldiers. Information technology galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible matter I could peradventure take done. It was just thoughtless. I wasn't thinking; I was simply and so bowled over by the whole experience that I didn't realize what it would look like.

Oprah: I recently read that you were converted to Christianity by your chauffeur, who took you to a black church. True?

Jane: No. I have become a Christian, but information technology had zilch to do with a driver. And I do go to a black church.

Oprah: Yous do?

Jane: Providence [Missionary] Baptist Church.

Oprah: I grew up in a blackness church, and when whites would come up, it was a large bargain. So are you a big deal there?

Jane: Uh-huh!

Oprah: There's Jane!

Jane: I haven't joined whatever church—that'due south the church I've been to a number of times. I become to other churches too. I'thousand on a quest. I grew up in secular environments on both coasts—either in New York or Hollywood—and the simply people I knew who had faith were Jewish. Nearly of the people whom I did organizing piece of work with were lapsed Catholics, including both of my previous husbands.

Oprah: So y'all grew up with no faith? I was raised a Christian in the church, and I'm always fascinated that there are people who never had faith. I don't know how you lot exist without information technology.

Jane: My father was doubter. Once when I was almost 13, I wanted to go to church on Christmas Eve. I wanted to go hear the Christmas carols, and my father said I was a hypocrite—that was the environment I grew up in. And however for 15 years, I have felt guided. I interpreted that in a secular way in the starting time, merely then I heard Bill Moyers say, "Coincidence is God'south way of remaining anonymous," and it unleashed my need to be spiritual. This was almost ten years ago. I began to pray. I felt the manus of God on my shoulder. When I got on my knees and touched my fingers to my brow and prayed—and I e'er accept to do information technology aloud—I felt this incredible connection to God, or to what I call the Holy Spirit. That only happened once, when I moved to Atlanta, because it was the first time that I had spent time with people of faith—those who get to church and read the Bible. Ted has read the Bible cover to cover, twice. He can quote Scripture better than nearly preachers.

Oprah: The same Ted who has been quoted as maxim, "Christianity is for losers"—that Ted?

Jane: That'due south correct. Ted is a fallen angel. He was going to be a missionary. He was saved seven times, he says. He felt betrayed by God when his sister died horrifically from lupus when he was almost nineteen. And it turned him hostile—and it'due south not hard to be hostile to the church. Because you can go through history, the Crusades and the inquisitions, and the formal church has a lot to apologize for.

Oprah: Amen.

Jane: Simply that'due south facile. And Christianity or any religion doesn't necessarily have to exist virtually a church building. You lot behave your God inside you.... It's been difficult, because when you're famous and the word gets out that yous're a Christian, every church is saying, "Even Jane Fonda." People come up upward to me in airports and throw their artillery effectually me.

Oprah: Jane, a whole generation of women knows y'all as the workout queen who urged them to "go for the burn." How practice y'all feel well-nigh—

Jane: Conflicted.

Oprah: Why conflicted?

Jane: There are two sides. What got me into it was my move from eating disorders to compulsive exercising. So what's bad most it is that it was compulsive in the offset. Merely it is a healthier way to deal with body image than having eating disorders.

Oprah: I think trying to keep up with your workouts, when you wore that pink striped bodysuit and headband. You were being compulsive then? No wonder I couldn't keep upwards!

Jane: After Vietnam, Tom and I started the Entrada for Economic Democracy, a California organization, and I raised a lot of money. Then it became hard to raise money, because there was a recession. Tom and I sat downward and said, "Why don't we start a business concern to fund the political work?" That was the workout [serial]. It was owned by the political organization and raised 17 one thousand thousand dollars.

Oprah: That's a lot of tapes!

Jane: And I was nervous about it, considering I'm an actress. Was this going to upset my career? Only the infinitesimal I started doing it, I started hearing from women. Women would say, "I don't take sleeping pills anymore. I haven't had to take insulin. I can stand to my boss." And I realized information technology was about more than the shape of i'southward trunk. It was empowerment.

I e'er tried, in the books I wrote, to arrive clear: Sparse is not the goal. Just I was thin. Then no matter what I said, the subliminal message was, "You lot have to wait a certain way." And I'thou not happy nigh playing into that.

Oprah: But you helped and then many women define their boundaries—and you really started an practise motion.

Jane: That's why I'm conflicted. Because so many women say how positive it has been for them, but then there are also women who say—

Oprah: "I can never look like Jane." But what you intended was for every woman to find herself.

Jane: What I intended was to raise money for a political organization. Then it turned out that along with all the other women, I began to realize it was about a lot of stuff, including empowerment.

Oprah: In the years just before those tapes, you were bulimic. When did you end the bulimia? I read that you stopped at age 36.

Jane: Yes.

Oprah: What was that similar?

Jane: It was like hell. No i quite understands what causes it. And I think some people are more than prone to it than others, but it has something to exercise with living a lie. Non being authentic. Faking it. Information technology's like becoming a woman and then rejecting it. Like alcoholism, it's a disease of denial. And the problem—which yous don't realize in the commencement—is that it'due south simply as addictive as a drug.

Oprah: Which is hard for people to empathize. We all think that you lot can finish yourself from throwing upward.

Jane: It's very difficult. I saw myself going down a dark hole, and I had 2 children, and I was making a difference in the globe, and I had to make a choice between the calorie-free and the dark. Life and decease. And I chose life. I stopped cold turkey. I don't suggest everybody to do that, only I did. But it was years before I could sit at a meal without feeling anxious.

Oprah: I would imagine that every time you lot saw food, you lot would feel anxious. Because how could you do this and keep it a secret?

Jane: I think I lived on apple peels and the chaff of bread, because if I went any farther into the food, at that place'd be no stopping. Then that's what caused the anxiety—I preferred non even to be around food.

Oprah: This started when you were 12?

Jane: No. I learned information technology in boarding school, the fashion a lot of girls did. But it was more often than not when I became an actress at 21. There was the pressure to be sparse—and I was a model.

Oprah: Jane, because of all that I take read, I thought that you and Ted were finished. Only y'all don't seem finished at all.

Jane: We'll never be finished. Any happens in terms of our living arrangements, nosotros will always exist close. Nosotros've shared besides much. We have besides much in common.

Oprah: Is it hard to be at places with Ted at present?

Jane: Not at all. We have a blast. We went out when my brother was here, with my brother's wife and Ted's kids, who adore me, and I adore them. It'south hysterical because Ted's ex-wife Janie was in that location, too. We had such fun—Janie and I can relate amend now. I said, "Janie, y'all sit on that side of him, I'll sit on this side and we'll breathe really hard!" Nosotros picked on him, and he laughed!

Oprah: But what about dating—practice you intend to engagement other people?

Jane: I haven't been. I'll tell you lot what, I haven't idea nearly it.

Oprah: You haven't?

Jane: I oasis't the need. I don't know what'due south going on. At the end of my terminal matrimony, human being, I was lookin'! Merely at present I don't intendance.

Oprah: What practise y'all need in a companion?

Jane: I have always been with men who were type A, alpha males. I must exist because I'thousand with him, I'd remember. But what made them what they were [also oft meant] they were lacking empathy genes. And at present I know I don't need an alpha male; I need somebody who's interesting. I'm not pretending that I'm 100 per centum healed, so I might non know [if a man is right for me] right away, but it wouldn't take me seven years to figure information technology out. Maybe a month or two.

Oprah: You said earlier that it'due south in the third act of life—the last 30 years—that everything gets pulled together. What practise you need to pull together in your third deed?

Jane: When I began making On Gilt Pond [in the eighties], I met [co-star] Katharine Hepburn, which was terrifying. She looked at me and asked, "Are you going to acquire to exercise the backflip?" And I had no intention of learning to do the backflip; I'grand terrified of going over backward, and I hate cold water. But what was I going to say—no? So I said, "Of course."

Knowing I would have to shoot this scene in which I had to do a backflip at the end of the summer, I started taking lessons with a swimming charabanc. Kickoff I practiced on a mattress, and then I graduated to the raft on the water. On the days I wasn't shooting, I'd go out there and practice my flip. And Katharine used to hibernate in the bushes on the shore and sentinel. One day, I finally did a backflip! I was covered with bruises, and I crawled up on the shore. And she was standing there. "Yous made me like you lot, Jane," she said. "I've watched you twenty-four hours later on twenty-four hour period. You lot know, you've got to conquer your fears. Otherwise you'll become soggy. You have to do what yous're agape of." That really stuck with me. What am I afraid of at present? Intimacy. So that's what I accept to work on. In the 3rd act, I don't desire to be soggy—to get to the end and have regrets.

Oprah: And when you say intimacy, you're not talking about sex, right?

Jane: Sexual practice and intimacy are not the aforementioned: You can have sex activity all your life and never be intimate with a person. There has to be empathy in the relationship. Y'all accept to enjoy seeing through their eyes. When you're with them, you're there and not thinking nearly what yous're gonna do tomorrow.

Oprah: Doesn't intimacy crave a fully opened heart?

Jane: Well said. You lot can think that you lot take a fully opened heart, merely as with an onion, there are layers to the heart. You tin recall it'due south fully opened and then discover a whole other layer.

Oprah: Do you think that what has happened to you—this finding your voice, continuing to grow—is possible for everybody?

Jane: Not for everybody. Some people take been wounded across repair. Some people just can't come back. And at best, they can maintain. That notwithstanding, I call back everyone else tin can. But you accept to be prepared to take leaps of religion. You have to exist brave.

At the end of my 2nd marriage, I had a nervous breakdown. I needed a wheelbarrow to carry my heart: I thought information technology weighed ten pounds. I thought blood was coming through my skin. I would step exterior and be shocked that the sky was still blue. How could the sky still be blue when life was such pain? I couldn't believe I could injure and then bad. I couldn't speak above a whisper. That was when Ted beginning chosen me and asked me out. I said, "I tin't talk; I'll call y'all dorsum." Then I thought, "If God is asking me to suffer this much, there has to be a lesson." And my friends were telling me, "Y'all accept to go along busy." I only saturday at home. I was careful who I had effectually me. I would take-wheel rides with my girlfriends. And I began to notice these coincidences—like the incredible people who came into my life....

Oprah: Considering you started to pay attention.

Jane: Yep. I wasn't living authentically earlier, but I didn't realize it. So what's the lesson? Don't give up. In that location are lessons to exist learned even in the about horrendous pain. And yous don't know that when you're immature.

Oprah: Maya Angelou has taught me, when I'm in the deepest pain, to say, "Thanks, God." Because no thing how dark the day, there'southward a rainbow. And so now I say, "God, what are yous gonna teach me?" And that makes it about the lesson, not the consequence.

Jane: Exactly.

Oprah: Jane, it's been rumored that you're going dorsum to theater. Is that truthful?

Jane: I would love to do theater if it resonates with me and speaks to things I really desire to say.

Oprah: Was your appearance at the Academy Awards this year a coming out?

Jane: No.

Oprah: It sure looked like one—if that wasn't coming out, I don't know what is! What was that?

Jane: Fun. Plain [the show'southward producers] called [my friend] Paula, who used to be my agent, and said, "We want Jane to present the special accolade." Paula chosen me right after the separation was announced. I was still in the crying stage, and she said, "You improve do the University Awards." And I said, "I tin't practice that! People will resent it. I'thou non in the business organisation anymore. It looks like I'yard trying to squealer the limelight." And she obviously bullied me into saying okay. About 15 years ago, I had hosted with Robin Williams and Alan Alda, and I wore this fabled dress. I said to Paula, "I've got only the dress!" And she said, "Yous're not gonna wear a dress that you've worn earlier! Are you kidding? Ask Vera Wang." And Vera fabricated my clothes!

I enhance money every year for [charity]—I auction everything but my underwear—and [after the Oscars] I thought, "I'll auction the apparel!" That got into the papers—and so I got to liking the dress. So I got a 2nd round of publicity saying I'grand not going to sell the apparel, I'm going to wear it for a yr so sell it!

Oprah: Did you feel sexy when you lot walked out onstage?

Jane: I owned the stage. I was within my trunk. I was a little worried when I had to turn—I had on heels that were almost four inches loftier. I was curious about how I would feel being back [in Hollywood]. I felt welcomed. I went to the parties, and I sat there thinking, "Everybody is and then nice, and I'm then glad I don't live here!" I've done it already. And I wouldn't get back there if you paid me.

Oprah: Even if I paid you a lot?

Jane: A lot. Because at my core, I'm an activist. And California is so large, and the problems are so vast, that you can never experience you have an bear upon. Here, I can matter.

Oprah: Who are yous now, Jane?

Jane: Who am I? I'm a survivor. I'g a woman with tremendous inner resources and resilience. I care virtually people. I believe in "Do unto others equally you would have others do unto y'all," and I live by that. I am condign authentic, and that's important to me. I accept surpassed both my parents in terms of emotional stability, happiness and well-being. And I'thou a lucky woman. I've deserved my luck.

Oprah: Exercise you believe you created your luck?

Jane: No. I think that, like most of u.s.a., I was born with an innate goodness. And I believe that God has seen that in me and has protected me through times when I should have died so I could fulfill my potential and practice his piece of work.

Oprah: The Bible says, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Exercise you believe you're chosen?

Jane: I believe I'm chosen.

Oprah: And what is your calling?

Jane: To provide opportunities for people who don't have the opportunities they should.

Oprah: Have y'all had dissimilar callings in your three different acts?

Jane: The innate calling is the same.... I've e'er felt like a teacher. Whenever I've learned something important, my reaction has e'er been to tell everybody about it. I read a book, I buy 100 copies and I send them out.

Oprah: Tell everybody!

Jane: That's what I live for.

Oprah: Is there anything nearly the third deed that scares you lot, Jane?

Jane: No.

Oprah: Not even death itself?

Jane: Non at all. I feel and so full. I simply feel good. I'm 62, and I'm finding my voice. I hateful, if that'southward not fabulous—

Oprah: That is!

Jane: Ted said, "People your age aren't supposed to change!" I said, "Oh?" I can't tell you what living in Atlanta means to me. I tin can't tell you what having the opportunity to hang out with my girlfriends means to me. I feel similar the world is earlier me.

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Source: https://www.oprah.com/omagazine/oprah-interviews-jane-fonda/all

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