Scared of nothing but close relationships is the soul-baring admission of the undentable Jane Fonda still going strong at 82. “I am very rarely afraid. I’ve been shot at, had bombs dropped on me; but I tend not to be afraid. Maybe emotional intimacy scares me. That’s where my fear lives,” she said in an interview punting her most recent book about climate change – What Can I Do? That’s her current focus and which saw her arrested a few months back on a demonstration against government inertia and imprisoned briefly.
Born 21 December 1937 9.14am New York to actor Henry Fonda and socialite Francis Ford Seymour, she’s had an extraordinary life. Although written off by many as a shallow, surgically enhanced mannequin who betrayed her country by turning up in North Vietnam as Hanoi Jane, she’s not short of talent and good instincts. She has two Oscars to her credit (Klute and Coming Home) and zoomed into the zeitgeist with her fitness videos which remain the biggest-sellers ever, instigated to raise money for her left-wing second husband Tom Hayden’s activist cause.
Her taste in men has always been hair-raising, no surprises given her five-times married father. Her first husband French film director Roger Vadim turned her into an almost soft-porn star. Hayden was dismissive of her talents. Her third husband billionaire Ted Turner was diagnosed bi polar. She said she was affected by her father’s obsession with women being thin, and that plus a repressed childhood with her bi polar mother unable to relate to her and suiciding sent her into a 30-year struggle with bulimia.
To have survived all that and emerged looking as good as she does is no mean feat.
She’s a Sun Sagittarius on the focal point of a T square to Saturn in regretful Pisces in a creative opposition to a film-star 8th house Neptune. Her Sun is also sextile Mars in determined Aquarius and inconjunct Pluto on her Descendant, which latter would attract her to controlling and intense partners. She’d also be dependent at points in her life with a 7th house Leo Moon though she says she’s past relationships now. Her Venus in Sagittarius is also square Neptune which won’t help to stick her into committed relationships.
Her 3rd house activist Uranus is unaspected which can indicate too much or too little reforming zeal – or more likely spurts of high-octane activity and fallow periods in between. She also has an enthusiastic Jupiter on her Ascendant in a pushily-confident opposition to Pluto.
Her relationship charts with both her parents have composite Mars Pluto hard aspects suggesting a one-sided relationship, requiring submission from her as a child. As does her relationship chart with her daughter Vanessa from her first marriage whom she evidently did not bond with due to post-partum depression and then left her as she had been left herself in childhood with professional carers as she went off filming. These aspects tend to roll down generations.
I heart Jane ~ a true legend.
Gratitude for this rich archive on a cold winter night.
(Oh yeah, I’m seeing that yod with her transformer fork of Pluto!)
Your last line “ These aspects tend to roll down generations“ floored me as I thought about my own family. My father was mostly emotionally distant, and one brother suffered most, vowing he would raise his children differently. Which he did … except for one daughter with the *same birthday* as our father (though obviously decades apart). She also most resembles our family (versus his wife’s), ie the past he wants to put behind him. I knew all this, but when I read your words it all came together. (meanwhile we other siblings have no children at all – even more extreme, in a way, and also supporting what you say)
Agree completely as I suffer too..generational aspects.. where if a parent got no love from theirs they don’t give to their kids
While not wild about her 80’s leotard phase I’ve always been impressed by her resillience and commitment, you could see her passion in her acting. Still I shouldnt be a snob, given she helped a lot of Americans get fit even if it was powered by her fathers fat shaming and reinforced by her husbands objectification. A familiar and soul sucking dynamic fot millions of women.
As to the idiots who bang on about Hanoi Jane she has addressed the issue multiple times and apologised, even though she really had nothing to apologise especially given the climate of anti Vietnam protest at the time and the multiple other celebrities who spoke up yet whose reputations were not tarnished, rather enhanced.
Re good instincts, astrologically I also note that Jupiter in Aquarius, something I see in charts of many humanitarians, visionaries and servants of the people including Obama, Warren and of course Albert Einstein.