The Oscar-nominated role Jane Fonda was “pushed” into playing: “It wasn’t that good”
While many will remember the late Robert Redford for his fantastic work in the likes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men and The Sting, if you want to see him at the peak of his charismatic, comedic best, watch the Neil Simon movie Barefoot in the Park, where he goes up against the equally brilliant Jane Fonda.
Fonda plays off him superbly in the film, which tells the story of a pair of newlyweds grappling with life on the fifth floor of a claustrophobic New York apartment, with eccentric neighbours, plenty of snappy dialogue and a fascinating look at what Manhattan life was like back in 1967, all huge yellow taxis and miniskirts.
She was already an established comic talent by the time the movie was made, having starred in Cat Ballou two years earlier, a light-hearted western that bagged Lee Marvin an Oscar, and had considerable success on Broadway at the start of the decade, picking up a Tony award as far back as 1960.
She had laid the foundations for her on-screen chemistry with Redford when she acted with him in 1966’s The Chase alongside Marlon Brando before heading to France to film the steamy drama The Game is Over. Although neither of those movies pulled up any trees, she was by now seen as a global sex symbol, and she went stratospheric when she appeared in Barbarella, the sci-fi with the infinitely copied opening scene involving Fonda disrobing while floating in space.
Her early career, encompassing frothy comedies and sexy roles was perhaps why her next step was such a surprising one, the 1960 Sydney Pollack depression-era drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. Fonda’s performance in the film about a debilitating dance marathon, which picked up nine Oscar nominations, was heralded as a huge and accomplished change of direction, and led to her taking on the role that eventually won her a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award, 1971’s Klute.
She told Numero: “I’d never got off American cinema. I filmed American movies like Cat Ballou and Barefoot in the Park during my ‘French period’. When I first got the script for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (Sydney Pollack, 1969), it wasn’t that good, but (her then husband Roger) Vadim pushed me into doing it. Once again, he was right!”
Throughout the 1970s, Fonda established herself not just as an actor of some repute but as a significant political figure too, facing huge levels of criticism for standing up against the US involvement in Vietnam and earning herself the nickname ‘Hanoi Jane’ after she was pictured sitting astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
She followed her ‘Best Actress’ Oscar with another one in 1978 for her role in the Vietnam War drama Coming Home, and picked up three more nominations for films she made up until 1986.
After acting in a 1990 movie with Robert De Niro called Stanley & Iris, she took a 15-year hiatus from films, until she paired up with Jennifer Lopez in the 2005 comedy Monster in Law. After that she returned to Broadway with considerable success and then joined the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s TV series The Newsroom, receiving two Emmy nominations for her role as a media company CEO.
More recently, Fonda made seven seasons of the Netflix hit Grace and Frankie, a final film with Redford called Our Souls at Night and at 87, she continues to defy her age; only this week, she launched a freedom of speech initiative aiming to protect the rights of people working in the entertainment industry.
