The movies that pushed Jane Fonda out of Hollywood: “I didn’t want to be doing it anymore”
Despite what some people might think, creativity is not an infinite source. Many artists and actors go through periods of their life in which they feel uninspired, unfulfilled and distinctly uncreative, sometimes stemming from dissatisfaction in their personal lives or working so intensely on something that their brain feels completely useless. It’s a tricky balance to find, with your passions bringing you joy, but doing too much of it can sometimes leave you feeling devoid of feeling.
They always say that if you do something you love, then you’ll never have to work a day in your life, but many would completely disagree with this sentiment. While you might have fun performing high-stakes stunts and travelling around the world to film in tropical locations, the recent production of The White Lotus proves that luxury doesn’t diminish the work needed to make films – a job is a job, and while it might come with certain privileges, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a pretty exhausting and invasive industry to be a part of.
It can lead even the greatest of the greats to become disillusioned with their craft and the business of Hollywood, feeling weary of accepting new projects and unhappy with the ones they’ve completed, something that Jane Fonda described while sharing the run of films that led her to briefly quit the business entirely.
Fonda is an old Hollywood legend, with everything from her performance as Barbarella, workout routines and political activism marking her as a star with substance and true integrity, using her voice for good in all corners of her life. From her achingly vulnerable monologue in Klute that earned her an Academy Award to her role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, the actor became a staple within the filmography of many great directors, working with the likes of Sydney Pollack, Alan J Pakula and Paolo Sorrentino.
However, despite having an excellent streak of films in the ‘80s, including her hit collaboration with Dolly Parton for 9 to 5, Fonda described how she was experiencing the opposite of success in her personal life, leading her to struggle with her work and feel detached from her sense of purpose.
When discussing this, Fonda said, “Without ‘blood calling from the deep places,’ my work that followed The Dollmaker—Agnes of God, The Morning After, Old Gringo, and finally Stanley and Iris—became harder and harder, although there were moments in all of them that I cherish. I just didn’t want to be doing it anymore. It was too agonising. I was experiencing creative disintegration, and I didn’t understand that my inability to be honest about the disintegration of my long marriage, the shutting down of my body, and my feeling totally responsible for it all was slowly draining me of life”.
The actor was going through the process of separating from her then-husband, Tom Hayden, with the pair eventually divorcing in 1990. Our personal lives can take a huge toll on our ability to work and be creative, and while Fonda might have been living the dream in the sense that she was the most in-demand actor of her time and creating some of her best work, everything else was far from perfect. Those films might have been important in her working life, but they represented something else to Fonda, leading to a years-long hiatus from the business while she found her bearings again.
