Jane Fonda’s favourite Jane Fonda movies: “There are four at the top”
From her very first movie appearance in 1960 right up until the present day, Jane Fonda has encapsulated everything glamorous and glorious about Hollywood for her entire career. An incredible actor and a standout human being, she is truly the real deal.
Proving that she really can do anything, Fonda provided a personalised road map during an interview with Deseret to help boil down her long and successful career. When asked about her “favourite” film she’d been involved with, she was unable to give a singular answer, so did her best to be as concise as possible.
“There are four movies that are at the top,” she revealed, “Coming Home, because it was the first movie I was actively involved in creating. Klute, because it was my breakthrough as an actress. On Golden Pond, because it was such a tremendously universal movie and it gave me a chance to do something for my dad before he died. And The China Syndrome, just in a different kind of way.”
All of Fonda’s picks were released between 1971 and 1981, the earliest being Klute, Alan J Pakula’s stalking-based neo-noir, which sees Fonda play Bree Daniels, a high-end call girl who becomes convinced that one of her clients is following her. When that client goes missing, she ends up involved in the investigation, assisting an out-of-town detective played by Donald Sutherland. The film was a huge success both commercially and critically, and if audiences weren’t won over by Fonda’s performance, then her claiming a ‘Best Actress’ Oscar for it certainly put her on the map.
Over the next few years, her profile and influence in Hollywood began to grow. A fierce anti-war campaigner, a stance that transformed her into a pariah, she met paraplegic Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic at a rally, which inspired her to tell a story about an injured soldier who finds love with the wife of a fellow serviceman, resulting in Coming Home, another certified smash for which Fonda won another Oscar as the focus of the love triangle. But, crucially, this film allowed her to flex her backstage muscles and establish herself a true creative force.
One year later, Fonda kept up her momentum with The China Syndrome, and while she was quite modest about it in the interview, it isn’t hyperbole to suggest that the movie might have saved the world. She plays a TV reporter who, while investigating a nuclear power plant, discovers that incompetence and corruption have left the facility riddled with safety issues, subsequently becoming a part of the star’s ongoing campaign against nuclear power.
It was released less than two weeks before the devastating Three Mile Island disaster, after which it took on an entirely new meaning; safe to say it changed a lot of people’s minds.
Fonda only made one film with her esteemed father, the great Henry Fonda, which sadly was the final role of his career. The 12 Angry Men star appeared alongside his daughter in On Golden Pond, where he played a crotchety old professor struggling to deal with aging and Jane the character’s daughter, while the role of his wife was played by Katharine Hepburn, who achieved her record-breaking fourth acting Oscar victory for the film.
The movie was released in December 1981, less than a year before Henry died from heart disease, and though it must be bittersweet, it’s clear that the younger Fonda cherishes this particular achievement.
