Jane Seymour Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model and fitness guru.
She is a two-time Academy Award winner, two-time BAFTA Award winner, and four-time Golden Globe Award winner. In 2014, Fonda was the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2017, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 74th Venice Film Festival.
Fonda made her Broadway debut in the 1960 play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations, and made her screen debut later the same year in Tall Story.
She rose to fame in 1960s films such as Period of Adjustment (1962), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967) and Barbarella (1968).
A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and went on to win two Best Actress Oscars in the 1970s for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981) and The Morning After (1986).
Her other major competitive awards include an Emmy Award for the 1984 TV film The Dollmaker, two BAFTA Awards for Julia and The China Syndrome and four Golden Globe Awards.
“Resilience is a very mysterious thing. When I was first starting out, I’d go to auditions, and I knew so many of the gals. Half of them were far more beautiful than me, and the other half were far more talented, but none of those women made it. I’d wonder, why did it happen for me and not them? Now I think it had to do with that core resilience. I was born that way, and they just weren’t. On my bad days I say to myself, ‘Fonda, you’re resilient, and you’ve never stopped trying to get better.’ That’s my mantra, and it’s saved me many, many times.”
(W Magazine interview, 2015)
