Jane Fonda says she’d disappear into a monastery before she'd get married again. She’s had three marriages — to a French director, an anti-war activist, and the billionaire Ted Turner — and each ended in divorce. But she told me that when she found herself newly single at 62, she finally felt whole for the first time.
She was celibate for seven years before she started dating her current boyfriend, music producer Richard Perry. With him, she says she’s discovered a mature kind of intimacy and a new role as caretaker. He’s living with Parkinson's, and she’s learning how to help.
In next week’s episode, I speak with Jane Fonda about her mother's suicide when she was a girl, her father Henry Fonda's long decline, and the lessons she learned by choosing to be alone. Here’s a preview of our conversation — the full show comes out June 18.
Jane Fonda recently spoke at TEDxWomen about living in this age of unprecedented life expectancies:
In 1972, Fonda spoke out at a rally in protest of the Vietnam War:
And for a certain generation, Jane Fonda might be most well-known for her workout videos: