Jane Fonda on why her father hated method acting: “He didn’t like that idea”
They may have taken entirely different approaches to the profession, but Jane Fonda and her legendary father, Henry Fonda, nonetheless ended up as one of the most formidable father/daughter duos in Hollywood based on nothing but their bulging trophy cabinets.
Any actor who follows in the footsteps of an illustrious parent comes bearing the extra weight of anticipation from the very beginning, something that evidently bothered the second-generation Fonda as she quickly set about establishing herself as one of her generation’s most naturally gifted talents.
Her haul includes two Academy Awards, a pair of Baftas, a Primetime Emmy, and eight Golden Globes. On the other hand, her old man’s impressive and iconic career saw him rewarded with lifetime achievement awards from both the Oscars and the Golden Globes, in addition to winning competitive prizes from both ceremonies for On Golden Pond, which he starred in alongside his daughter.
Fonda Sr. was one of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s most reliable everyman performers, and even when he took a rare detour into villainy, the results were just as spectacular as Sergio Leone’s classic Once Upon a Time in the West showed. However, he never bought into the method, which put him directly at odds with his child’s approach.
Fonda studied method acting during her early years in New York, but as she explained to Entertainment Weekly, it was a decision her father couldn’t wrap his head around. “I didn’t understand, at the time, all the reasons that my father so hated the Method and was disparaging of it and of me because I was studying it,” she mused. “It has to do with his dislike of self-exploration.”
Many actors believed that total immersion into a character wasn’t just unnecessary but self-indulgent, with Fonda admitting “he was not unique in his generation in not wanting to do that.” However, she believed there might have been other reasons. “It’s a form of therapy, in a way, the Method, because you have to go deep inside yourself and unlock a lot of doors,” the star offered. “He didn’t like that idea. He was scared of it.”
She viewed her father as somebody who “couldn’t deal with feelings” or emotions, so plumbing the deepest emotional depths for a part was something he simply wasn’t interested in. Fonda suggested that “he could never engage in self-exploration, self-analysis, which is a lot of what the method is,” and as a result, he opted not to deal with the technique at all.
The debate over the pros, cons, merits, and flaws of method acting continues to this day. Still, there are countless names who make it patently clear an actor doesn’t need to be transformative every time out to achieve greatness.
