The unusual way Henry Fonda taught Jane Fonda about acting: “That meant a lot to me”
The Fondas are a Hollywood dynasty. Henry Fonda was one of the most respected actors in the business in the 1930s and ‘40s, appearing in classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Fort Apache and earning three Oscar nominations. Of his three children, two became highly respected actors in their own right. Peter Fonda was at the forefront of the New Hollywood movement in the late ‘60s, especially with the industry-upending road movie Easy Rider in 1969. His daughter, Bridget, also followed in his footsteps, appearing in movies like The Godfather Part II and Jackie Brown and getting nominated for two Golden Globes and an Emmy before retiring from acting in 2002.
Then, there’s Jane Fonda, whose career has arguably outshone even her father’s. Starting with traditional roles in the early 1960s, she went on to become a defining face of the changing industry in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. From Cat Ballou and Barbarella to Barefoot in the Park, Fonda spent a decade as a sex symbol before successfully making the transition to more serious fare. She’s been nominated for seven Academy Awards, two of which she won, as well as seven Baftas and five Emmys. More than six decades into her career, Fonda is still working steadily, appearing in three films in 2023 alone, just a year after the final season of her seven-year Netflix sitcom, Grace and Frankie.
It’s logical to assume that Peter and Jane Fonda’s careers can be traced back to their fathers. Surely the veteran of Old Hollywood would have passed along priceless pieces of acting and industry wisdom to his children about his decades in the business. But according to his daughter, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the elder Fonda had a notoriously chilly relationship with his children, seeing them infrequently as children and displaying little warmth at any stage of their lives.
He was similarly distant when it came to their careers. Far from paving the way for their success, he remained aloof. Part of this was likely due to the rapidly shifting nature of Hollywood at the time. His generation of actors represented the outdated establishment of Old Hollywood, whereas the Hollywood of Peter and Jane Fonda was swimming in rebellious counterculture. There was more to it than that, though. As Jane Fonda revealed in a 2011 piece in The Guardian, most of what she learned from her father was through his performances, not through personal interactions.
“Most of the advice I got from my dad came through the characters he played in films like 12 Angry Men, The Grapes of Wrath and The Wrong Man,” she said. “He played these characters that were brave and strong and believed in justness and equality, which taught me to pay attention to those traits.”
The father and daughter may not have had much catharsis in real life over their troubled relationship, but Jane Fonda has reflected on the emotional filming of the only movie they made together, 1981’s On Golden Pond. In the film, they play a father and adult daughter who have a strained relationship. In one scene, Jane Fonda purposefully added a line that hadn’t been in the script to startle him out of his carefully distant demeanour. Touching his arm, she says, “I want to be your friend.”
When the scene was played back to her years later, she was brought to tears and had to turn away from the screen. “It’s funny for an actor who doesn’t want to be seen as emotional, but he was terrified of emotions,” she said. “And that meant a lot to me”.
