Jane Fonda: On Golden Fonda

After completing Old Gringo, Fonda made a romantic drama with Robert De Niro called Stanley and Iris, in which she is the one who takes charge of the education of a man; she plays a factory worker who teaches an illiterate co-worker how to read. Fonda is guarded in her comments on De Niro, laughing that she found him "very intense" but leaving it somewhat ambiguous as to whether she found his intensity a pleasure or a pain. By contrast, she speaks effusively about her Old Gringo co-star, Jimmy Smits. "I think he's an incredible presence on the screen," Fonda gushes. "We did a talent search in all of Latin America and Spain and the United States, and he was the only one. He was our first and last choice. He's extremely charismatic and sexy, but he has depth as well. I felt totally dominated by him."

One of the most problematic projects will be an American remake of Pedro Almodovar's arthouse hit, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Fonda admits she is taking a risk by remaking a foreign film that was so beloved by the critics, but she believes she can pull it off. "The challenge," she observes, "is how to keep that wonderful style and whimsy and warmhearted generosity that Almodovar had in his film and at the same time make it more accessible to an American audience. As great as the reviews were, very few people saw it, just because it was a Spanish movie. I would like more people to see it because of what it says about women. All of the women in the movie are being treated badly by men, but they have such joy and generosity and humor. My character is on the verge of totally falling apart, absolutely obsessing about this guy who's left her, and at the same time she is capable of taking care of her friends, watering the plants, feeding the animals, looking great--God forbid she shouldn't look good--and ready to seduce the policeman and her ex-lover's son. I love taking these women who are going through such hell and making such a positive movie. It's like a hymn to women's resiliency."

But isn't the movie somewhat regressive in focusing so intensely on women's obsession with men? "Well, we're all obsessed with men," Fonda chuckles in reply. "But that doesn't mean that we're not the greatest sex in the world. We're the strong ones, we're the ones that hold it all together. The movie shows us with all of our obsessions and vulnerabilities, but it also shows how fascinating we are."

Fonda also expects to spend at least a couple of years working behind the cameras on A Bright Shining Lie. Clearly she is still exploring just where her future in movies lies.

"Given how long it takes me to develop a project," she muses, "I know what will happen eventually is that I'll start a project that's supposed to be for me and that will end up being for a younger actress. It will be an interesting challenge for me to sit back on the sidelines as a producer while another actress plays a role that was originally destined for me. I think I'll be very good in that situation, because I love actors and I'm real supportive."

If her acting career does taper off, she claims she would survive quite handily. "There are a lot of things that interest me a whole lot that have nothing to do with acting," she says. "Producing, politics, health, hiking, fishing."

Nevertheless, Fonda is clearly wrestling with a host of personal and professional changes as she enters her sixth decade. She was reportedly devastated by the breakup of her marriage to Hayden, who was rumored to have been carrying on with a much younger woman. Aging has never been easy for American women, and it may be doubly difficult in Hollywood. Jane Fonda's mother committed suicide in 1950, and Fonda once said of the suicide, "Some of it had to do with the fact that she was middle-aged, and she'd never been taught to have anything but youth and beauty."

"I'm not suffering over my age," Fonda says. "I wish I was younger, but I'm not. Aging is definitely something that you have to think about as an actress, but it doesn't scare me. As long as life is rich and people like me, as long as guys like me, I'll survive. Right now I'm having a great time."

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Stephen Farber is co-author of Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego and the Twilight Zone Case.

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