Jane Fonda has won Oscars and accolades aplenty, led the feminist charge in the 1970s, been married three times, written seven books and fought off breast cancer in between.
She made her film debut over 50 years ago and has somehow survived in an industry renowned for its fickleness.
But perhaps the most startling thing about the actress and L’Oreal ambassador is that, at 75, she is still having sex. Lots of it, apparently, and it’s never been better.
“I make a big effort now to be a good lover to my lover,” she tells The Weekly.
“Sex can be intimate or not. Intimacy can be sexy, or not. But you can’t experience intimacy unless you are in a relationship standing on your own two feet. In the past, I tended to fall in love at the drop of a hat.
“But I wasn’t whole. So there wasn’t a lot of intimacy, even though there might have been a lot of sex. And so I have, at this late stage of my life, become a whole person. And so there is more intimacy, which is, I think, just as important as sex, perhaps more important.”
The lover of whom she speaks is Richard Perry, an American music producer. Jane has sauntered down the aisle three times already — most recently and most famously to CNN founder Ted Turner — but she tells The Weekly she’s not likely to do it again.
“Are you serious?” she asks. “I will never get married again. What would be the point? The very thought of it makes me feel claustrophobic,” she says.
“Too many times, I have said, ‘This is it.’ But never again.”
She describes her adolescence as having been “challenging” — due in no small part to the fact her father left her mother when Jane was only 12 years old and that her mother was subsequently admitted to a psychiatric institution before committing suicide.
But she tells The Weekly it’s been the coming to terms with her troubled childhood that has help her finally find peace.
“I come from a family of depressed people, a long line of depressed people on both sides,” she says.
“So I really didn’t expect to be 75 and happy. And the thing is, I can honestly say I have never been happier. Part of getting older is knowing what you don’t need in life. You can’t let things go and become lighter. And it’s wonderful to finally feel this way.”
Read more of this story in the July issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
