Why Jane Fonda loves her movie that nobody saw in cinemas: “It did not do well”
Every actor makes at least one bad movie during their career, and it isn’t often they can walk away from a critical or commercial disaster with their head held high. Jane Fonda has been in a few stinkers in her time, but one Razzie-nominated effort did at least carry a silver lining.
If anything, the picture was a victim of circumstance. It was released hot on the heels of one of Fonda’s finest films, On Golden Pond, and it couldn’t hold a candle to it. It was a nailed-on awards season contender, and a passion project she’d developed after buying the rights as a means to co-star with her ailing father, Henry.
That’s precisely what it turned out to be, with Mark Rydell’s drama earning more money at the box office in the United States than any movie not called Raiders of the Lost Ark, with her father and Katharine Hepburn winning ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Actress’ at the Academy Awards, while On Golden Pond claimed three Oscars from ten nominations in total, including ‘Best Picture’.
Seven days later, the Fonda-led Rollover landed on the big screen, and nobody cared. Despite a talented director at the helm in Alan J Pakula, Fonda’s widow takes over her late husband’s company following his murder and becomes embroiled in a financial conspiracy with far-reaching implications.
Co-star Kris Kristofferson, the financial expert and love interest who aids Fonda in her quest to uncover the truth, notched a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Actor’ in a movie that failed to recoup its budget and was almost instantly forgotten, especially when another, and vastly superior, film with the same actor had debuted a week previously.
On the plus side, Fonda considers Lee Winters one of the best-dressed characters she’s ever played. So much so that despite acknowledging hardly anyone bothered to see it, she made the most of a flop feature by leaving the set armed with the entire wardrobe she’d sported onscreen.
“It was a 1981 movie called Rollover,” she told The Times of her peak as a fictional fashionista. “It did not do well. About two people saw the film. But I loved the clothes in it, and I got to keep them all. They were by the great costume designer Ann Roth and were very sleek, sexy, and beautiful.”
Rollover did at least manage to open at number one at the domestic box office, but that was as good as it got. Interest quickly tapered off, and even though Fonda was disappointed that nobody gave a shit about her latest starring role, she did have the double whammy of On Golden Pond‘s ongoing success and a brand new collection of high-end clothes to fall back on, which helped soften the blow.
She probably got good use out of them, too, seeing as it was her last role in a film for four years until she returned with Norman Jewison’s mystery thriller Agnes of God, meaning she went almost half a decade without being able to claim a five-fingered discount from a set.
