Kidadl SaysBorn Jayne Seymour Fonda, her career reached its heights as an actor, and in her 50 years as a professional, she has won two Academy Awards, one Emmy Award, three Golden Globes, and received many other movie awards and nominations. At the height of her popularity, she decided to give back to society and became an activist. Her books ‘My Life So Far’ and ‘Prime Time’ include a lot of personal experiences and anecdotes that are inspirational and motivational to young readers.What Parents Should KnowJane has been a vocal activist for decades. In 1972, she controversially sat on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi and received the nickname ‘Hanoi Jane’.She has also been known to protest and speak out against the Iraq War, violence against women, and, more recently, climate change.Jane and Henry Fonda were the first father-daughter duo to earn Oscar nominations together for the 1981 film ‘On Golden Pond’.What To Discuss With KidsJane has used her platform as an artist and a celebrity to speak up about change and a variety of controversial topics, voicing her opinions strongly.She took a break from her career in 1992 but returned in 2005 with a role alongside fellow actor Jennifer Lopez in the movie ‘Monster-in-Law’.Jane was named after the third wife of King Henry VIII of England, Jane Seymour. There is an actual ancestry connection, though distant, from her mother’s genealogy.IntroductionJane Fonda is an American activist, actress, and former model born on December 21, 1937.As a well-known actor, Fonda has won several honors, including the AFI Life Achievement Award, Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Honorary Palme d’Or, and the Golden Lion Honorary Award. She has also received two British Academy Film Awards, two Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy.The Best Jane Fonda QuotesJane Seymour Fonda, born in New York City to famed actor Henry Fonda and Frances Seymour Brokaw, a New York socialite, was destined early for an extraordinary and significant life in the spotlight.1. “A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.“2. “They are a very powerful movement, especially in San Francisco, they don’t need me, but they like me, they like our organization, the Campaign for Economic Democracy, because they know that working together we can be stronger than either entity is by itself.“3. “Stay curious. It’s much more important to stay interested than to be interesting.“4. “You don’t learn from successes, you don’t learn from awards, you don’t learn from celebrity, you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that’s the truth.“5. “If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist.“6. “Men fear that becoming ‘we’ will erase his ‘I.’ For women, our ‘we’ is our saving grace Women’s relationships are like a renewable source of power.“Jane Fonda Quotes About LifeDespite her initial lack of interest in taking up her father’s profession, Joshua Logan persuaded her to join him in the 1954 performance of ‘The Country Girl’ by the Omaha Community Theatre. This was the start of everything for her.7. “I had it in my head. I thought I had it in my heart—in my body—but I didn’t; not really. I couldn’t. It was too scary, like stepping off a cliff without knowing if there was a trampoline below. It meant doing life differently.” - ‘My Life So Far’.8. “A more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase. The upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity.” - ‘TedxWomen Talk’, ‘Life’s Third Act’, 2011.9. “In this country, the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.“10. “If you allow yourself, you can become stronger in the very places that you’ve been broken.“11. “We’re still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That’s the old metaphor: You’re born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude.“12. “Stay curious, keep learning and keep growing. And always strive to be more interested than interesting.”13. “Have you noticed how we are presented with the same lessons, over and over and over, before a tipping point is reached? The lessons we need to learn circle round us, closing in, until finally we are ready to take them in. Take them in. Those are the words that matter, because until I had embodied the lessons I was supposed to learn, absorbed them into the warp and woof of my being, they didn’t “take”; they remained a head trip and didn’t lead to changes in my behavior.” - ‘My Life So Far'14. “I think most of us have many personas inside us at the outset, but over time we lean to the one that is dominant and the others atrophy for lack of use. The difference with actors is that we are paid to become all the people inside us and to bring into us all the people we may have met along the way. Thus we remain instinctively aware of, unsettled by, curious about, empathetic toward, and eager to display all those potential beings we carry. Of all these, the empathy part is the most important and is, I believe, why actors—the good ones—tend to be open, progressive creatures: We are asked to get inside the skin of “other,” to feel with “other,” to understand “other.” Being able to see from this “other” point of view gives actors compassion.” - ‘My Life So Far'15. “When you can’t remember why you’re hurt, that’s when you’re healed.“16. “It’s never too late – never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.”17. “I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We’re supposed to be complete and whole, and you can’t be whole if you’re trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please.”18. “The people who did you wrong or who didn’t quite know how to show up, you forgive them. And forgiving them allows you to forgive yourself too.”Brilliant Jane Fonda Quotes About LoveAfter she met Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joined the Actors Studio, her passion for acting developed. She talks about falling in love with herself and her relationships with candor. Her struggle with weight as well as aging is also something she openly discusses and hopes that others can be inspired from.19. “Whether the scene was sad or funny, tragic or triumphant, never mattered. When it worked it was like being enveloped in love and light.” - ‘My Life So Far’.20. “Instead of drifting along like a leaf in a river, understand who you are and how you come across to people, and what kind of an impact you have on the people around you and the world, so that when you go out, you can feel you have made a positive difference.” -‘Sunset Boulevard’, 1950.21. “I always had a penchant for falling in love.“22. “This openness makes them vulnerable, so trust is key. So is self-love: It’s impossible to be truly intimate with someone if you don’t like yourself.” - ‘My Life So Far’.23. “I love mistakes because it’s the only way you learn.“24. “I would think that a man would want people to know he was married to a smart woman—unless he was insecure about his own intelligence. Or unless he didn’t really love her.” - ‘My Life So Far’.25. “Well, what is a relationship? It’s about two people having tremendous weaknesses and vulnerabilities like we all do, and one person being able to strengthen the other in their areas of vulnerability, and vice versa. You need each other. You complete each other, passion and romance aside.”26. “It’s a toxic desire to try to be perfect. I realized later in life that the challenge is not to be perfect. It’s to be whole.“27. “The glow and energy of the healthy woman is the ultimate beauty, the only beauty that will last.“28. “I don’t want my wrinkles taken away - I don’t want to look like everyone else.”29. “Relationships are the oxygen of the psyche.”30. “Declare a truce and accept food as a life-giving friend.”31. “The more you treat yourself positively, the less you’ll want or need to be negative.”32. “I want to give a face to aging.”33. “Whatever kind of workout you settle on, it should include the Big Three of exercise for health and fitness-aerobics, resistance exercises, and stretching.”34. “When food becomes the enemy, every time we lose the fight we not only gain weight, but lose our self-esteem as well.”35. “The glow and energy of the healthy woman is the ultimate beauty, the only beauty that will last.”Inspiring Jane Fonda Quotes About ActivismJane Fonda co-founded the Women’s Media Center in 2005 with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, a group that seeks to promote the voices of women in the media via media, advocacy, and leadership training, along with the production of original content. Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname ‘Hanoi Jane’. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women and describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist.36. “The bravest soldiers aren’t unafraid, but they’re the ones who are able to harness their fear on behalf of courage.“37. “You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don’t find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.“38. “We are not meant to be perfect; we are meant to be whole.”39. “If you allow yourself, you can become stronger in the very places that you’ve been broken.”40. “The bravest soldiers aren’t unafraid, but they’re the ones who are able to harness their fear on behalf of courage.”41. “I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.”- ‘My Life So Far'42. “Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood.”43. “No distractions. Center yourself. This is your time.”44. “You can run the office without a boss, but you can’t run an office without secretaries.”45. “I don’t think there’s anything more important than making peace before it’s too late. And it almost always falls to the child to try to move toward the parent.”46. “My greatest asset is that I am constantly changing.”47. “But the whole point of liberation is that you get out. Restructure your life. Act by yourself.”48. “Instead of drifting along like a leaf in a river, understand who you are and how you come across to people and what kind of an impact you have on the people around you and the community around you and the world, so that when you go out, you can feel you have made a positive difference.”49. “For women, our ‘we’ is our saving grace. Women’s relationships are like a renewable source of power.”50. “Christ was the first feminist and because of that I’ve learned from his teaching to call myself a Christian feminist, adding that her faith is not a matter of traditions and dogmas but, rather, a spiritual experience.”51. “Someone once said that under the bell jar of compliance, the only thing that blooms is rage.”52. “When you have to work real hard to re-create the pain, and you can’t quite get there, that’s when you’re better.”53. “We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation.”54. “We need women friends, women who challenge us.“55. “My life is a stairway to heaven, not a ’decline into decrepitude.”56. “It is never too late to master your weaknesses.”57. “I feel like my honesty gives people the freedom to talk about things they wouldn’t otherwise.”58. “Enjoyable does not necessarily mean easy.”59. “When I say women are the agents of change, I really should say women and girls.”60. “Ultimately we must concern ourselves with pulling out by its roots the decadence that controls our culture, the profit motive that controls our culture.”61. “Denial can be a pathology or a survival mechanism – and sometimes it’s both.”62. “The most incredible beauty and the most satisfying way of life come from affirming your own uniqueness.”63. “You know, you’re only as happy as your least happy child. So if your kids aren’t okay, you’re not good.”64. “I have a confidence about my life that comes from standing tall on my own two feet.”65. “The bond between a parent and child is the primary bond, the foundation for the rest of the child’s life. The presence or absence of this bond determines much about the child’s resiliency and what kind of adult they will grow up to be.”66. “I finally got it: empower girls and everything changes.”67. “I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn’t have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.”68. “Where identity is not fixed, performance becomes a floating anchor.” And could I perform! Making the unreal seem real, the sad seem happy, hoping that somewhere along the way it would all work out, that I would discover who I was. Meantime I had an anchor.”69. “The most incredible beauty and the most satisfying way of life come from affirming your own uniqueness.”70. “One part of wisdom is knowing what you don’t need anymore and letting it go.”71. “I don’t need a man to feel whole. In my marriages, I’d lost parts of who I was because I was trying to mould myself into what I thought a man wanted me to be.”72. “You couldn’t pay me to be 20 again.”73. “I said to the surgeon, ‘Don’t get rid of my wrinkles.’ I don’t want to look foolish, where you’ve got this face that doesn’t match your neck.”74. “ A more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase. The upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity.”75. “For so long, it seemed like if you said you were a feminist, you were anti-men. I think that’s dissipated for the most part now.“76. “I hope that men understand that the fight for equality benefits everyone, and that it’s in everyone’s best interest to have men and women be able to shoulder the same societal responsibilities at every single level – economically, militarily, spiritually, parentally.”77. “We all, in fact, carry so many people inside us; the only difference is that actors get paid for it, and we sort of spruce it up a bit.”78. “To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.”79. “Female listeners are leaving traditional talk radio because of the rough-edged, shouting nature of it. Women want more light and less heat.”80. “Think of anger as a muscle. The way you express anger isn’t the way that I do, or you. If you have a good director, you will find that he’s getting you to use an entirely different muscle that you never even knew you had - it’s real hard and sore, then after a while it becomes normal.“81. " You discover all these new muscles when you enter a new character - that’s what a director does for you.”82. “One of the wonderful things about being an actor is that every director is different.”83. “When you know in your heart why you did something, and you feel and you know that in spite of all the controversy that it was right, doesn’t matter.”84. “I hate to create cynicism about politicians. We just need to invade. Regular people need to run for office and keep their balls and ovaries intact.”85. “Studios weren’t banging on my door to offer me parts… And I thought, well how am I ever going to make movies that speak to my heart and to my values?”86. “I knew that my newfound activism and feminism was going to improve my acting, because I was seeing things not just in very narrow, individual, kind of Freudian terms, but seeing them in a much broader, societal way that was going to deepen and enrich my talent.”87. “My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.”88. “Everyone should know that feeling of overcoming fear and mastering something. People who aren’t taught that become soggy.”89. “Movies are collective, cooperative endeavors, which I like a lot. But writing is all up to you, it’s what’s so scary; it’s just you and that page. But I really like it a lot.”90. “Mostly actors are progressive because we are accustomed to all the nuances of human life, whereas dictators just try to flatten it all out. So we usually try to stand up to dictators like, well, we won’t mention names.”91. “I never would’ve imagined in the first part of my life that I could’ve stood up and said anything. The war in Vietnam changed me. I was so angry. Some of my speeches probably weren’t well considered.”92. “Getting fit is a political act - you are taking charge of your life.”93. “If I can change, anybody can change.”94. “I found that you’re more powerful when talking from your soul.”95. “If you can intervene early in the lives of girls here and in other parts of the world, you can begin to change the prospects for the future.”96. “My identity depended on men for so long. You can be successful and still have the feeling that if you’re not with a man you don’t exist.”97. “You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.”98. “If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill-equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.”99. “Feminism is not just about women; it’s about letting all people lead fuller lives.“100. “And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders—and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggle against French colonialism—I don’t think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape, or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, written by Ho Chi Minh.”
Born Jayne Seymour Fonda, her career reached its heights as an actor, and in her 50 years as a professional, she has won two Academy Awards, one Emmy Award, three Golden Globes, and received many other movie awards and nominations. At the height of her popularity, she decided to give back to society and became an activist. Her books ‘My Life So Far’ and ‘Prime Time’ include a lot of personal experiences and anecdotes that are inspirational and motivational to young readers.
