The redoubtable Jane Fonda, actress, activist and keep-fit guru, is still going strong at nearly 81 and looking twenty years younger. In a new HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts (out Sept. 24), she opens up about growing up with a bipolar mother who suicided when she was 12 — and how she eventually learned to understand and forgive her.
Born 21 December 1937 at 9.14 am New York, with actor Henry Fonda as a father, she studied art, did some modelling and had her life turned around when she met acting coach Lee Strasberg. She said: “It was a turning point in my life. It was like the roof had come off my life.” A prolific stage and screen career followed, littered with awards and some controversies, especially over her anti-Vietnam War activism and support for the Black Panthers.
In her forties she was the leading influence in the fitness craze that kicked off and has never flagged with her best-selling fitness videos. She took more than a decade off after sixty, then re-emerged to relaunch her career in her seventies on Broadway and in TV series like Grace and Frankie and several highly acclaimed movie roles.
She has a staggeringly strong and complicated chart with two Grand Trines in practical Earth and emotional, self-protective Water, two T squares one stubborn/enduring Fixed and one scattered Mutable; and a powerful Yod of her Sagittarius Sun sextile Mars inconjunct Pluto. A Yod most often produces a fated turning point in life which leads to a single-minded sense of purpose. Pluto on a Yod can be immensely influential but can also mis-use power.
Her 7th house Leo Moon opposes Mars, which reflects some of the difficulties with her mother and that squares onto her midheaven, so she’d channel her angst into her career. She’d need a relationship in life for security but with her Yod apex Pluto on her Descendant, marriages would be tempestuous and she’s been married and divorced three times.
Like many movie stars she has ethereal, filmic Neptune in her 8th in a creative, neurotic opposition to Saturn square her Sun and Venus in Sagittarius.
When she met Lee Strasberg in 1958 her Yod had moved by Solar Arc to have Mars on one leg in a showbizzy opposition to her 8th house Neptune; her natal Sun on the other leg was being anchored by a tr Saturn conjunction and her Solar Arc Pluto was conjunct her 7th house Moon – so all three ends of the Yod were being triggered sweeping her into a long and illustrious career.
She suffered badly for decades from bulimia as her mother did. And has been active in women’s rights since the 1970s and campaigning for Native Americans.
Her fitness videos funded her “Campaign California” efforts with then-husband Tom Hayden. This was promoted as rent control for Californians. The poorly thought out campaign would have made landlord rent to the least impactful tenants (single men who traveled extensively for business) and would have hurt the small business owner more so than big business. Another case of an actor who has everything not understanding the issues of the common folk.
You’re right, JW.
On Norm MacDonald’s Netflix show, Fonda said she fell in love with awful men. As we all know, who we love has a big effect on our character and conduct. At nearly 81, she reflects on most of her failings with honesty.
Transiting Pluto in the 12th house was within 1 degree of her natal Mercury in 2015, when the TV series Grace and Frankie first aired and she experienced a late-life career boost and acclaim.
The series Grace and Frankie has a fresh approach to aging. Fonda and Lily Tomlin play energetic, smart women. Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston play their husbands who fall in love and marry. Not your typical sitcom about “old people”. The show hit its stride from the second season on, and has been renewed for a 5th season. From the start, Fonda and Tomlin were Producers as well as the having the starring roles.