The documentary Jane HBO of HBO shows why she continues to run at full speed in the 60-year-old activism

It could be said that Jane Fonda is fed up with the current administration, with the fact that so few people vote in mid-term elections and with the way farm workers are treated in the United States. thinking that the 80-year-old's icon is fed up with fighting, because it's far from the truth. Fonda, although widely known by many fans for his decades playing in movies like 9 to 5 and Barbarella, has also devoted 60 years of his life to political activism – much of which is recounted in the new documentary, Jane Fonda in five acts (directed by Susan Lacy and available on HBO on September 24th). And although many of the fronts she once fought for – for equal pay for women and civil rights, and against war and spreading misinformation – are the same fronts that so many of us are struggling for. the moment she has more than one. things keeping her energized.

First of all, she found that her activist work, finally, works. "I have lived in myself and I have witnessed in others, deep changes, from black to white, like throwing a coin," she said on the phone at the end from september afternoon. from a human being, this gives you a lot of your engine is constantly powered. "

The second priority is Fonda's dedication to personal care – not to Netflix, the PCs and the variety of deliveries. "I'm at full speed and I've been doing it for over 60 years, but I also make sure I sleep a lot, eat well, play sports," she says. "Health has a lot to do with it. It is difficult to continue if you are not in good health and many activists are going to burnout.

Third, curiosity and thirst for knowledge. According to the actor, "I am constantly studying and listening and watching, which also gives me the means to continue and not to exhaust". will soon captivate the masses: empathy. "When you have empathy and you really want to do something for people, it feeds you, it gives you energy," she says.

Fonda has been doing interviews to support the HBO documentation all day long, but when she speaks a simple electronic word, it's impossible not to feel the energy running through it. She shot outright. And of course, it has reasons to be. "I think that because of the attitudes and values ​​of the current administration, empathy has become a precious commodity, it does not lack it. We need more, she says. In other words, we must be able to feel compassion and empathy for those who are outside our own [spaces], including empathy for people who do not agree with us. She says she refers to those who voted for President Trump, many of whom, she said, felt left out and excluded from national conversations.

Of course, none of this is a new concept: to cross the corridor, to see things on both sides, to understand the voters who have felt discarded for decades. But when Fonda talks about it, something tells me that she does not make speeches, simply repeating the mantras we all learned to say in these tumultuous times.

This something is the breadth of his whole life; Like the documentary details, Fonda has come a long way in his 80 years on this earth. She has had three marriages (director Roger Vadim from 1965 to 1973, activist Tom Hayden from 1973 to 1990, and billionaire Ted Turner from 1991 to 2001). She went through the family turmoil, including losing her mother when she committed suicide when Fonda was just a girl, and tried to repair her difficult relationship with her father, who often calls her "fat" when she was a teenager. She was accused of taking on American troops through a misguided anti-war tour that resulted in a photograph of her behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. Wrong information still exists (take a look at Megyn Kelly). 2018 comments on the "Hanoi Jane" period for evidence). "It always makes me sad," admits the actor.

But she overcame everything to live her best and most authentic period of life (the act "Jane" of the title five of the doc). To achieve this, like the details of the film, Fonda had to not only find herself, but also understand her empathy and learn to see things from the point of view of her mother, her father, her ex-husbands and those who were so certain his activism was and is anti-American.

"What I learned as I grew older was the importance of forgiveness. It's really hard to get old and keep a lot of grudges, "she says with a slight laugh. "It's important to go back and understand why people did what they did even if they hurt you, to try to understand their reasons. Half the time you will discover that it has nothing to do with you, it's their own problem and you can forgive them and yourself.

Of course, even after understanding this past understanding and finding forgiveness for herself and the people who raised her, Fonda always considers herself "vulnerable" to the effects of her education, including societal pressure for the women stay young and beautiful as long as possible.

"Girls and young women growing up with feminist mothers who have had the courage to stand up to cultural pressure and who have helped the girl feel good about herself and be a person in her own right. These are women who will be less vulnerable to society's pressure on how they are supposed to look and how they are supposed to behave. Not all women have this kind of influence from the mother or the wife, "she says, noting that she is now surrounded by a circle of ferocious feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Lily Tomlin.

In the document, which was shot in 2016, Fonda admits to having given up and having had plastic surgery in the past, which she now regrets. But there is a very important reason why she has a certain empathy for herself and does not blame herself for this pressure: we are only human beings.

"I think we should not fight if we are vulnerable to social pressure. We all want to be approved, we all want to join, we all want to be popular, but we should not sell to do it, but it took me a long time to find out, "says Fonda.

If I had stopped at any point in my life before that, it would have been pathetic because I was not what I could be.

This "knowledge" did not take place without his life being in constant revolution, constantly reinvented and changing. Fonda is not who she was at the age of 30, so she was getting drunk enough with vodka to start turning the striptease scene that opens Barbarella (even if she still drinks vodka – never wine); she was not who she was at age 32, barely eating and feeding on stalks to feed her at political gatherings; she is not even who she was when she was married to Ted Turner in the late '90s, when she became a mountain woman and found herself compromising her own passions for the billionaire. In a world where most people worry that their lives need to be regulated and perfected at a certain age, Fonda proves that the constraint of understanding everything in a regulated timeline is "poppycock" 39; call.

"If I had stopped at some point in my life, it would have been pathetic because I was not what I could be. I was part of myself, a work in progress and always looking. And I thank God for having the means to say, "That's great, but it's not really the case. There is more to life than that and I have to move forward, "she says. "It's not always easy to do, but I do not think young people should feel that if they do not have it together, [that’s it]. Look, we live an adult life longer than our parents and our grandparents. This means that it is advantageous to be a late defender, so if you have not been there before 50 or 60, that's good too.

Fortunately, it looks like Fonda finally feels like she's really found – not in a radical way, in a Hollywood movie, but in a solid, practical and unshakeable way. She spends most of her time working on things that are close to her heart (a Netflix movie with her long-time friend Robert Redford, using her celebrity to publicize causes such as prison reform, protect women against FGMand the need to a fair salary for food service workers; film a message of public interest to convince voters to run for the midterms). She co-stars in the revolutionary series Grace & Frankie, alongside his friend Tomlin, does the work to change the way older women are perceived. It provides for a continuation to 9 to 5 with Tomlin and Dolly Parton, a contemporary extension of the 1980 film that she originally produced to raise awareness of the pay gap. And she spends exactly zero time, she says, worrying about what others think of her.

"If people want to see me as an actress, that's fine. If people want to see me as a training man, that's OK. That's what. Or if people do not have time to think about me, that's fine. I understand, "she said with obvious sympathy. "There are many important things to think about these days."