"Distinguished celebrity biographer and Vanity Fair contributing editor Bosworth recounds the life story of an American icon in all its heady--and at times, unabashedly scandalous--glory. With consummate skill and insight, the author follows Fonda... Bosworth's coverage of Fonda...is as epic as the life that she chronicles. Reading to savor."
-Kirkus, starred "[Bosworth's] remarkable reconstruction of long-ago events has a fly-on-the-wall viewpoint, written with such intimacy that it sometimes generates the strange sensation of being present with Fonda and her friends... Bosworth has succeeded in capturing Fonda's step-by-step transformation from wide-eyed, apolitical ingenue to the poised personality of recent decades."
-Publishers Weekly, starred "Watching Jane Fonda wrestle with her many passions has been one of the most fascinating stories of the past fifty years. Brilliant, beautiful, achingly vulnerable, self-wounding and yet with a Joan of Arc sense of self-determination whenever she steps into the spotlight. Fonda is one of the greatest film stars to ever appear on the screen. Her life deserves to be re-evaluated as it is in Patricia Bosworth's Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman."
—Alec Baldwin "Patricia Bosworth has written an irresistible biography of the accomplished controversial actress whose roles on screen and off helped define a generation. Whether you love Jane Fonda or abhor her, the Private Life of a Public Woman is a detailed and generous exploration not only of the contradictory world Fonda grew up in but of the many people who shaped her."
—Jeannette Walls "Bosworth’s expedition into every corner of Fonda’s life makes for far more than a spellbinding biography. It sweeps the reader into a cultural history of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, when this female icon helped define the causes of the era. The access gained by Bosworth is impressive—lovers, stepmothers, and ex-husbands share their secrets, adding to what will certainly become the definitive portrait of a woman conflicted, torn between ferocious ambition, family, and feminist causes. Bosworth’s rendering of Fonda’s interior chaos becomes a revealing probe into the female psyche."
—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages "PatriciaBosworth’s brilliant detective work has unearthed so much about Jane Fonda that I didn’t know—so much feeling, so much courage, so much hurt. Reading this book, it occurred to me that Fonda, despite her brilliant acting, despite her activism, despite her life led in the headlines, was really the archetypal woman of her generation: a woman torn between love and work, family and accomplishment. Bosworth’s book is far from another Hollywood biography; it is a human portrait and, at the same time, a major American life. Reading this book, living Jane’s life along with her, is an adventure and a pleasure."
—William Mann, author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn and How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood "Jane Fonda was born with beauty and talent, which brought her fame and wealth. Now she's blessed with a biographer who knows Hollywood and understands the human condition. Nothing about Fonda's life (her obsession with her looks, her lovers—male and female—her husbands, her money, and her elusive father) escapes the keen eye of Patricia Bosworth, who tells the life story of a cinema icon, one of the most intriguing women of our era. You will be enthralled from start to finish."
—Kitty Kelley, author of Oprah: A Biography"Gracefully written and deeply researched, Patricia Bosworth's Jane Fonda is not only a first-class biography but a thoughtful,sympathetic, yet objective, study of a central figure in the preoccupying drama of American celebrity life as it has been played out over the past half century."
—Richard Schickel, author of Conversations with Scorsese "As an heiress to Hollywood royalty, survivor of childhood trauma, sexpot, movie star, fitness guru, activist, trophy wife, and serial self-reinventor, Jane Fonda has embodied every theme in modern American mythology. And I can't think of anyone better equipped to tell her story than Patricia Bosworth. Her superb reporting, combined with an equally sure understanding of what the details add up to, has produced a clear-sighted but sympathetic and compelling portrait of a woman who really is an emblem of our age."
—Amanda Vaill, author of Everybody Was so Young
Bosworth goes behind the image of an American superwoman, revealing Jane Fonda more powerful and vulnerable than ever expected whose struggles for high achievement, love, and successful motherhood mirror the conflicts of a generation of women.
In the hands of this seasoned, tenacious biographer, the evolution of one of the century s most controversial and successful women becomes nothing less than a great, enthralling American life.
Jane Fonda emerged from a heartbreaking Hollywood family drama to become a 60s onscreen ingénue and then an Oscar-winning actress. At the top of her game she risked all, rising against the Vietnam War and shocking the world with a trip to Hanoi. Later, while becoming one of Hollywood s most committed feminists, she financed her husband Tom Hayden s political career in the 80s with exercise videos that began a fitness craze and brought in millions of dollars. Just as interesting is Fonda s next turn, as a Stepford Wife of the Gulfstream set, marrying Ted Turner and seemingly walking away from her ideals and her career.
Fonda s is a story of the blend of deep insecurity, magnetism, bravery, and determination that fuels the most inspiring and occasionally infuriating public lives. Finally here is Fonda and all the women she s been.
From the Back Cover
Advance Praise for Jane Fonda
Watching Jane Fonda wrestle with her many passions has been one of the most fascinating stories of the past fifty years. Brilliant, beautiful, achingly vulnerable, self-wounding, Fonda is one of the greatest film stars to ever appear on the screen. Her life deserves to be reevaluated as it is in Patricia Bosworth s Jane Fonda. Alec Baldwin
Jane Fonda was born with beauty and talent. Now she s blessed with a biographer who knows Hollywood and understands the human condition. Nothing about Fonda s life (her obsession with her looks, her lovers, her husbands, her money, and her elusive father) escapes the keen eye of Patricia Bosworth, who tells the life story of one of the most intriguing women of our era. You will be enthralled. Kitty Kelley, author of Oprah: A Biography
Patricia Bosworth s brilliant detective work has unearthed so much about Jane Fonda that I didn t know so much feeling, so much courage, so much hurt. It reveals Fonda as the archetypal woman of her generation: a woman torn between love and work, family and accomplishment. Bosworth s book is far from another Hollywood biography; it is a human portrait and, at the same time, a major American life. Reading this book, living Jane s life along with her, is an adventure and a pleasure. William Mann, author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn
Far more than a spellbinding biography, Jane Fonda sweeps the reader into a cultural history of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, when this icon helped define the causes of the era. The access gained by Bosworth is impressive lovers, stepmothers, and ex-husbands share their secrets, adding to what will certainly become the definitive portrait of a woman conflicted, torn between ferocious ambition, family, and feminist causes. Bosworth s rendering of Fonda s interior chaos becomes a revealing probe into the female psyche. Gail Sheehy, author of Passages
Patricia Bosworth has written an irresistible biography of the accomplished, controversial actress whose roles onscreen and off helped define a generation. Whether you love Jane Fonda or abhor her, Jane Fonda is a detailed and generous exploration not only of the contradictory world Fonda grew up in but of the many people who shaped her. Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
About the Author
PATRICIA BOSWORTH, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has known Jane Fonda since they were students at the Actors Studio and has been writing about her since 1968. Bosworth has also written acclaimed biographies of Montgomery Clift, Diane Arbus, and Marlon Brando. She lives in New York.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE
Only Jane Fonda could upstage Oprah Winfrey. It happened on February 10, 2001, during a performance of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, which was being acted out by sixty megastars in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. The show was a fundraiser for V-Day, the international organization that works to prevent violence toward women.
I’ll never forget it.
All the celebrities, including Oprah, stood in a semicircle reciting their vignettes about women’s sexual triumphs and tragedies from index cards—all the celebrities except Jane, who had memorized her piece and when it was her turn stepped out of the circle and gave a spellbinding rendition about what it’s like to watch one’s grandchild emerge bloody and screaming from his mother’s womb. By turns anxious, tender, and emotional, Jane ended the monologue with “and I was there in the room. I remember.”
The audience gave a loud cheer. At that point, Jane curtsied to a dark-haired young woman who was seated in the front row. It turned out the young woman was Jane’s daughter, Vanessa Vadim. Months before, Jane had assisted the midwife at the birth of Vanessa’s son, Malcolm. Jane was paying her homage.
Afterward there was a noisy party at the cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom. Jane was surrounded by so many admirers that I had to push my way through the crowd to congratulate her.
“I did it! I did it!” she exclaimed to me, eyes sparkling. She hadn’t acted in thirteen years and she suffered from “such God-awful stage fright I was petrified I wouldn’t be able to get through it,” she confided to me, “but I did.”
We gripped hands.
Jane and I have known each other since the 1960s. We were kids then, studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. I was an actress for ten years on Broadway before switching to journalism, while Jane was refashioning herself as Barbarella.
I wrote my first article about Jane in 1970 for McCall’s magazine. She had just been nominated for an Academy Award for her searing performance as the suicidal marathon dancer in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? She went on to win Oscars for both Klute and Coming Home, movies that defined her political evolution.
For the next three decades I continued to write stories about her: when she was burned in effigy as Hanoi Jane, and a couple of years after, when the Gallup Poll listed her as one of the most admired women in the world along with Mother Teresa.
Jane polarizes, and the public remains fascinated by her. She has an extraordinary ability to reinvent herself in response to the times. Consider that she transformed herself from movie star to political activist to exercise guru to tycoon wife and now, in the twenty-first century, she’s turning into an exemplary philanthropist. She doesn’t generate, she reacts—to people, places, and events; everything about the fast-paced, chaotic reality that is American life turns her on.
But then I realize that above all she is a consummate actress who has an uncanny ability to inhabit various characters at will. She once told me, “The weird thing about acting is that you get paid for discovering you have multiple personalities.” Jane can will herself into becoming whatever she wants to become. Which is why I wanted to write this book about her.
In 2000 I began researching. Jane had given the project her blessing, so I interviewed scores of her friends and colleagues. But Jane herself refused to speak to me. She said it was because she was writing her own memoir and didn’t want to give anything away. Then in January 2003, she suddenly changed her mind and invited me to come to her ranch in New Mexico for a week. “I’m going over my FBI files and you can help me. I don’t feel like doing it alone,” she said. I agreed, and I wasn’t surprised; Jane constantly changes her mind. That’s the way she is—full of contradictions.
I wasn’t surprised either to receive the following e-mail from her a couple of days later:
Sat 18 Jan 2003
Subject: Gulp
From: Jane Fonda
To: Patricia Bosworth
Deep breath. Big gulp. Here’s why: I have my own special personal stories about my life and I do have a big fear that I will give them away to you, because I do tend to let things just spill. YET, I do trust you and would like to spend time with you so here goes:
I do have all my FBI files like I said and you are welcome to go through them provided you share what’s interesting (most isn’t) with me. This is a good way to avoid having to do it myself in exchange for you’re [sic] being there. How’s that? If it’s just us, it’s truly just us. I am not a cook and eat sparingly when left to my own devices. . . . Aside from that, when not writing I am engaged in heavy manual labor such as cutting down trees and clearing trail. You would be welcome to come along but not required to participate.
XXOO jane
Two months later I arrived at Jane’s 2,500-acre ranch outside Santa Fe. After she showed me around her comfortable, spacious home, we sat down in her vaulted living room, in front of a crackling fire, and drank red wine from oversize goblets. She told me how glad she was that I was writing her biography. There had already been nine published biographies of her, all written by men—all of whom, she believed, felt threatened by her. “I’m glad a woman is writing about me,” she said.
I began explaining why I wanted to write this book. Jane has fulfilled every female fantasy, achieving love, fame, money, and success on a grand scale. She’s a genuine American icon who won’t be remembered for her movies but rather for her outsize serial lives.
Jane interrupted. “I’ve already written five hundred pages of my book. How many have you got?”
“Not that many,” I admitted.
With that, she grinned. “What I really want to know is, who’s gonna be first?”
She is the daughter of Henry Fonda. His portrayal of Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath is embedded in the American consciousness. Jane has always willed herself to be the best at everything. She is also heir to a terrible childhood tragedy: her mother, Frances Fonda, slit her throat when Jane was twelve. Her suicide is the crucial event in Jane’s life and it haunts her to this day.
After the suicide Henry Fonda, always the perfectionist, became even more remote, escaping into his work and three more marriages; each wife seemed younger than the last.
Jane kept on battling for his love. She triumphed on Broadway and then went on to make forty-one movies, creating characters as disparate as the naive cowgirl in Cat Ballou and the giddy newlywed Corie in Barefoot in the Park to the tough-talking call girl Bree Daniels in Klute, for which she won her first Oscar. In her twenties she began to reinvent herself to attract and please a succession of father substitutes. She shifted seamlessly from playing film director Roger Vadim’s Parisian sex kitten, to political activist and exercise guru when she was married to radical Tom Hayden. Finally, she became the trophy wife of maverick billionaire Ted Turner, a man as famous as she is.
My 2003 visit to her ranch coincided with a turning point. Although she still considers herself primarily a social activist, Jane had decided to recycle herself as a movie star after thirteen years away from the screen. At sixty-five, “It won’t be easy,” she joked. She’d hired a new agent; she had braces on her teeth; and she was trying out color contacts for her eyes. She’d also just had her breast implants removed. “My kids are so relieved. They tell me I look normal again,” she said.
She’d already turned down the remake of The Manchurian Candidate because she didn’t want her Hollywood comeback to be as a villainess. She told me that Cameron Crowe, who wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Jerry Maguire, was writing a new movie for her. She said she would be playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s tap-dancing mother in the film. She did not say she was now often obliged to audition for parts, including another role for which she was in competition with Anne Bancroft. I found it hard to believe these two Oscar-winning actresses had to compete against each other, but in the end the face-off was merciful: neither got the part. Ultimately, the Cameron Crowe project didn’t work out either.
How can I accurately describe our conversations in the five days that followed? Jane is a prodigious talker. I taped and took notes, and everything she said ended up, in one way or another, in this book. She talked and talked and talked on a vast range of subjects: The importance of Michael Moore’s documentary on the Columbine massacre; Jimmy Carter; the United Nations; her travels to New Delhi, Mumbai, and Jerusalem. Marilyn Monroe. The joys of being a grandmother. Her first husband, Roger Vadim, and his sexual vulnerability; her dreams; her brother, Peter’s, courage; her son, Troy, and his dynamite performance in Soldier’s Girl where he played a GI in love with a transsexual.
She also talked about Sue Sally Jones, her beloved tomboy friend from grade school, with whom she’d recently reunited. Simone Signoret. The glories of a good martini and the ecstasies of pot. She talked about Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, the book that has meant more to her than any other book. She talked about her daughter, Vanessa’s, talent as a filmmaker. She talked...
