There have been many incarnations of Jane Fonda over the years, but the one common denominator has been the enthusiasm with which she has embraced them all. Whether she was vamping it up as screen goddess Barbarella, campaigning against the Vietnam war as Hanoi Jane, or donning legwarmers for her aerobic work-out videos and exhorting women to ‘feel the burn’, Jane Fonda has never shown less than 100 per cent commitment to all of her endeavours.
It’s a commitment that can be fascinating, inspiring and, frankly, a little exhausting to watch, but if anyone thought that Jane, now 73, might be slipping quietly into her dotage, they’d be mistaken. Her latest project tackles the thorniest subject of all – ageing – and if anything, she’s even more impassioned now than ever. ‘I made a list of everything I would have wanted to know when I was in my 40s about getting older,’ she says, ‘and decided to write a book about it.
‘The list ranged from what sex is going to be like, to how to meet new people, to exercise, to what happens to your brain as you get older. Life expectancy has gone from an average of 46 years to an average of 80 within the past century, which is a huge difference, and I basically wanted to understand the new realities of ageing.’
Jane’s book, Prime Time, is a comprehensive guide to living well in the ‘third act’ – the term she
uses to describe the final three decades of her life. It is a warm, informative and incredibly life-affirming book, with readers of all ages being able to learn from her undisputed zest for life. It’s also pretty forthright, and although she doesn’t shy away from the details (some of the chapters on sex might need an accompanying stiff drink), neither does she hide the fact that she has made some very public mistakes on the path to where she is now. ‘If people can learn anything from me it’s that I’ve not always been happy and I’ve not always been strong,’ she says. ‘When I was 20, I thought I was going to die of loneliness, I was so unhappy. But as I’ve got older, I’ve found myself growing happier, and I wanted to understand why.’
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