“She scares me to death”: why Jane Fonda hated being mistaken for Brigitte Bardot
Born into acting royalty, Jane Fonda rose to fame in the 1960s and became one of the industry’s most recognisable faces. As the daughter of 12 Angry Men star Henry Fonda, the actor’s career had a significant head start, but it took some time for Fonda to truly prove her talents.
Some of Fonda’s early roles were commercial and critical failures, like her feature film debut, Tall Story, as well as other titles from the beginning of her career, such as Walk on the Wild Side, and In The Cool of the Day. She fared better in 1963’s Sunday in New York, although Fonda isn’t the biggest fan of the movie. Yet, Fonda soon temporarily moved away from Hollywood and lent herself to several French productions, beginning with 1964’s Joy House opposite one of the country’s biggest stars, Alain Delon.
During this time, Fonda married the director Roger Vadim, who had risen to prominence with the scandalous 1956 movie And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. The filmmaker married Bardot from 1952 to 1957 and got involved with her when she was just 18. She then became a cinematic icon and was widely treated like the French equivalent of Marilyn Monroe, known for her acting, singing, modelling, style, and sensuality. Her role in And God Created Woman shot her to fame, but her creative and romantic partnership with Vadim would soon fizzle out.
After a few romances with other actors, Vadim settled down with Fonda and, like he did with Bardot, saw her as a muse. He placed her into three of his films, as well as an anthology movie, Spirits of the Dead, co-directed with Federico Fellini and Louis Malle. Vadim found mixed success with Fonda in his work, but regardless of their critical reception, these erotically-charged movies exposed the actor to a wider international audience and led her to become known as a ‘sex symbol’.
Fonda and Bardot had a few things in common – both having married Vadim and then becoming known for sexually-charged movie roles – but the former hated being compared to the French star. Talking to John Sandilands in 1968, Fonda revealed her distaste for being compared to Bardot, despite the actor’s legacy. She explained, “You want to know something very funny? Sometimes, when I go into St Tropez with Vadim, people call me Brigitte. They’re standing right up close to me, and they call me Brigitte!’”
She continued, “I mean, I just find that puzzling. I don’t know how people can make that mistake. Bardot. She’s a real phenomenon. She can be in a room filled with powerful personalities, but you are still constantly aware that she is there. I’ve met her, but I can’t talk to her – she scares me to death.”
Fonda didn’t hold back in making a slight dig at Bardot, concluding, “Of course, she has made a series of very bad pictures.” This might sound a little harsh, especially considering that Fonda had many bad pictures under her belt at this time, too, but at the end of the day, who wants to be mistaken for their husband’s ex-wife?
