Jane Fonda has had one hell of a time in Hollywood. The two-time Oscar winner recently took V.F. on a trip down memory lane, talking candidly about projects ranging from 9 to 5 to Grace and Frankie and everything in between.
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Fonda reveals that her seminal workplace comedy 9 to 5 was initially intended to be a more serious film about the horrors of being a woman in the workplace. “I said…‘I’ve got to make a movie about this,’” Fonda recalls. “Because the stories were so horrific, it was going to be kind of a serious movie. It was a dark comedy.” That all changed when Fonda saw an up-and-coming actress named Lily Tomlin perform her one-woman show.
“I was smitten,” Fonda tells V.F. “She just blew me away. I had never seen that kind of talent. And I said to myself, I’m not going to make a movie about secretaries unless Lily Tomlin is one of them.”
Fate kept conspiring to turn 9 to 5 into the comedic tour de force it’s considered today. “Driving home from the theater, I turned on the radio and Dolly Parton was singing ‘Two Doors Down,’” Fonda recalls. “And I thought, Oh, my goodness, wouldn’t that be something to have Dolly be the third one? And they happened to have the same manager. And it took me a year to persuade them both to be in this movie.”
While Fonda made a name for herself for bringing fearless women to life in films like 9 to 5 and her Oscar-winning turn in Klute, her own experience as an actress didn’t necessarily start off boldly. “I was married to a Frenchman, and if he didn’t want me to do a particular movie I wouldn’t do it,” says Fonda, referencing her first husband, director Roger Vadim. “I was pretty much doing whatever the man in my life wanted me to do.” Still, Fonda’s career flourished with star-making turns in films like Cat Ballou and Barefoot in the Park, where she “fell in love” with Robert Redford—a costar whom she affectionately calls Bob. “We were both married and nothing came of it, of course,” Fonda tells V.F., “but I had such a crush on him.”
Not every film was such a delightful experience. Fonda recalls having to get drunk before shooting a nude scene for Barbarella, directed by her then husband Vadim, while struggling with body dysmorphia. “It was difficult for me psychologically to do it,” Fonda shared. The scene ultimately had to be reshot because a bat kept flying between Fonda and the camera. “I had to do the same scene that I was so frightened of, with a hangover,” she says.