The scene Jane Fonda refuses to watch: “It makes me cry”
Jane Fonda has had an incredible and groundbreaking career. Not just as an actor, her presence in culture stems into politics too, as the performer has taken a stand against injustices since the beginning, making it clear that she held her morals in just as high regard as her drive. It meant that she’d had a career built on integrity and being deeply representative of her spirit as a person. And while she’s incredibly proud of that, there’s one scene that’s too tough to revisit.
It’s impossible to overstate how bold and brave Fonda has always been. In the 1960s, when she was only just starting out, she risked throwing her whole career away by speaking up against the Vietnam War. It made her the target of government surveillance, led to studios blacklisting her and threatened to end her working life right as it was starting.
But Fonda’s privileged background seemed to instil in her the need to use her privilege for good. The daughter of socialite Frances Ford Seymour and actor Henry Fonda, Fonda grew up in New York City surrounded by the artistic elite. She knew she had doors opened for her, but she also knew that meant she had a voice she could use and power she could exercise.
She was taught this by her father, who was also very politically engaged. During his own career, Henry Fonda was vocal during elections about his support for the Democratic party, prompting his daughter’s bravery by also being bold enough to speak out about politics at a time when public figures were largely expected to stay neutral and quiet on more serious topics.
However, politics aside, Fonda loved and admired her father. After her mother passed away when she was young, her father was her role model, especially as he encouraged her acting. So, in 1981, when they made a film together, it was an incredibly special moment for her.
Cast as a father-daughter duo in a movie about a parent and child reconnecting at the end of the father’s life, On Golden Pond was Henry Fonda’s final movie before he died a year later. While still proud of the picture, it’s proven too hard for Jane Fonda to revisit.
“’Because it makes me cry. I miss my dad so much,” Fonda said during an appearance on CNN, explaining why she turned her face away from a clip of the film. In particular, an improvised scene between the two gets to her as her character says to her father that she wants to be friends with him.
“I purposely did something that hadn’t been rehearsed because I wanted him to be surprised. And when I said, ‘I want to be your friend,’ and I touched his arm, that we’d not rehearsed that, and he flinches. And he ducked his head, and he puts his hand like this (demonstrating), but I saw that he was emotional,” she said.
Looking back in retrospect, knowing that her father would soon pass, this scene and the whole holds more weight. “That movie On Golden Pond was kind of like a resolution in a way, my being able to say that to him in the scene. And he died five months later. And before he died, I was able to tell him that I loved him and that I forgave him for, you know, whatever didn’t happen,” she said, seeing the movie as the tender goodbye to her father.
