On April 16, Jane Fonda visited Fresno. She was a presenter at the 2024–2025 San Joaquin Valley Town Hall series (valleytownhall.com/). It was a great opportunity to meet and listen to a celebrity, a great actress who is also an activist and who was in the spotlight during the protests against the Vietnam war (1965–1973).
I personally “met” her when I was in college in my home country, Argentina. One day I attended a movie theater to watch Barbarella (originally released in 1968). Me, like the rest of those in the theater, fell in love with her. I was expecting to see her in similar movies, but instead I remember reading newspaper articles about her antiwar activism.
I was curious as to why a famous actress—her father, Henry Fonda, was already a Hollywood legend—was so involved in activism, and I thought that this would be a question for her should I ever meet her.
Fonda was really outspoken and she traveled around the United States and abroad to speak against the war. Obviously, she didn’t care about her activism negatively affecting her career. And that doesn’t seem to have affected her career so much.
Yet, at 87, she remains energetic, sharp and funny.
During her presentation—at a packed William Saroyan Theatre—under the title “Resilience, Passion and Purpose,” she talked about several topics, including getting old and, of course, activism.
“When I was young I felt old; now I feel the opposite.” To get to this point, Fonda went through a difficult and painful process of knowing her family. She wanted to know who her close family really was. Her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, committed suicide at a psychiatric hospital when Fonda was 12 years old.
After researching her mother’s family, Fonda found out her mom was raped when she was seven years old. “Evidently she couldn’t overcome this trauma.”
Fonda said this was a necessary process to become at peace with herself and to be able to confront the last stretch of life in a positive tone. She added that exercising and eating well is crucial to good aging.
To Fonda, her activism is the result of injustice and unfairness. She explained her commitment to confront climate change and urged the audience to join the fight. She mentioned the polluted planet our children will inherit, noting that “by then it will be too late.”
She called burning fossil fuels the main source of pollution. And she was particularly critical of Democrats, many of whom, despite their nice words, continue to receive money from oil companies’ lobbyists. She called these Democrats “Oily Democrats.”
Fonda also urged to defend our democracy under attack by the current occupant of the White House.
I left the presentation with the feeling that, after so many years, she responded to the question I had for her during my college years.
