Jane Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960's with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou and has appeared in films ever since. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other awards and nominations. She initially announced her retirement from acting in 1991, and said for many years that she would never act again, but she returned to film in 2005 with Monster in Law, and later Georgia Rule released in 2007. She also produced and starred in several exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995. Fonda has served as an activist for many political causes, one of the most notable and controversial of which was her opposition to the Vietnam War. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women. She describes herself as a liberal and a feminist. Since 2001, Fonda has been a Christian. She published an autobiography in 2005 and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Fonda's first husband, from 1965-1973, was French film director Roger Vadim, with whom she had a daughter, Vanessa born in 1968 and named for actress and activist Vanessa Redgrave. According to her 2005 autobiography, Fonda participated in sexual threesomes at Vadim's suggestion.
In 1973, shortly after her divorce from Vadim, Fonda married author and politician Tom Hayden. Their son, Troy Garity (born 1973) was given his paternal grandmother's surname. "Troy" was an Americanization of the name of a young communist Vietnamese hero accused of conspiring to kill Robert McNamara in Vietnam. With Hayden, she also raised a foster daughter, Mary Luana Williams, who is an activist born to members of the Black Panthers. Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1990.
Fonda's third husband (1991-2001) was cable-television tycoon and CNN founder Ted Turner. In My Life So Far, Fonda says she "left the father's house" when she divorced Turner. In addition to having become a Christian, Fonda's desire to disassociate herself from patriarchy may have contributed to the divorce.
Fonda has also had romantic relationships with Alexander "Sandy" Whitelaw, a film director, with whom she was involved in 1960; Donald Sutherland, with whom she co-starred in Klute and dated in the 1970s; and Barry Matalon, a hairdresser whom she dated in the 1990s.
In 2007, she met a new partner, Lynden Gillis, at a book-signing in New York. When he walked up to her for her to sign his book she said "wow, you look like a movie star!" Gillis then gave her his business card and told her she should call him. Fonda coincidentially lost the card. Later, she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and told the story. She pleaded with him to call her office, which he did.
