It's five minutes before my Zoom call with Jane Fonda and I'm still tossing a coin between professional or glam. What do you wear when you're about to interview an icon who's currently walking the red carpet in Cannes? A woman who is a two-time Academy Award winner, whose legacy is so varied it also includes being a sprightly fitness guru to millions and a lifelong activist?
In the end I settle for jeans, a Breton t-shirt and smart blazer. It's the right call because when she beams in from the Film Festival, one thing is obvious right away: Jane means business. It's evident in her smokey eye makeup, which belies her 88 years. I learn later that makeup artist Harold James had used the cult Panorama Mascara to create the type of no-nonsense, fluttery lashes you can see in your peripheral vision.
It's also evident in her pragmatic approach to beauty. Jane has popped up in ad breaks with the catchphrase ‘Because you're worth it' for 20 years and she admits that she pays more attention to her skin as a result, even if her makeup bag looks a little different these days. “I always carry moisturiser – the L'Oreal Paris Age Perfect Golden Age Day Cream – and lipstick," she says. “I have powder and I have eyedrops. When you get older, your eyes get dry, so I have eyedrops. That's about it… I have a very good hair and makeup team that make me look better than I deserve to look.”
When I ask her about her all-time favourite looks, I would have put money on her saying the blonde bouffant, soft '60s makeup and futuristic pirate boots she sported in the erotic science fiction film Barbarella. Proving that she is anything but predictable, Jane Fonda says, “I think my look now. I just think that it flatters me. The hair is right for me at this age. I have a permanent wave. My hair is very, very straight and very, very stubborn and I do a lot of travelling by myself. I have to be able to do my own hair. And so I got a perm and it makes it much easier. I like it a lot.”
Then there's her no-holds-barred approach to ageing. “Youth is hard for everybody,” she says. “You have all these questions. Why am I here? Who do I have to know? What am I supposed to do? And when you're older it's 'I've been there, done that'. If you're lucky enough to be old, it's so much easier.
“I've had cancer, I've had mastectomies [Jane famously wore a ruffled dress to the 2016 Golden Globes to cover her post-mastectomy bandages], I've had lymphoma but I'm basically healthy and that makes all the difference in the world,” Jane continues. "It's hard to think straight if you're not healthy. It's hard to be optimistic if you're not healthy. Because your mind is not just up here [she says pointing to her head]. Your whole body is part of your mind. What you want to do is have a body that's strong and flexible. And boy, one thing I know having lived this long is you've got to stay moving. Don't become a couch potato. I used to run. I can't run anymore so I walk. It's not just about looking good. It's about feeling positive and alert and hopeful."
Jane is also at Cannes to promote the L’Oréal Paris Lights on Women's Worth Award — a grant and mentorship scheme that champions women directors and behind-the-scenes creatives. “Getting women to make films that are shown in our theatres is critical to empowerment,” she says. “We're the majority on the planet…and we respond to things differently. War affects us differently. Poverty affects us differently. The climate crisis. If our version of life isn't shown up there on that screen in this big dark theatre, then women in the audience, without even consciously thinking about it, are going to feel smaller. They're going to feel unseen, less valuable."
In particular, Jane spotlights Chloé Zhao, the Chinese filmmaker best known for her film Hamnet, as being the perfect example why films through a female lens are important. "No man could ever make the kind of movies that she makes and the way she makes them.”
Jane herself is set to star in and produce The Corrrespondent, so the conversation inevitably switches to third acts. “I'm going to be making The Correspondent when I'm 90, so it's a pretty good third act," she says, smiling. "It's way better than my first and second acts. [In my twenties] I was not happy. I was not healthy. I wasn't looking after myself. It's important that we can ask ourselves, ‘Why am I on earth?’ We have to be able to answer that in order to have a sense of wellbeing, of happiness. It took me a long time before I recognised my own value and before I could internalise that and really believe it and stand up for myself.”
Jane also wants to talk about the importance of defending the First Amendment because “you can't have art unless you have free expression." She says: "One by one our democratic rights, that were hard fought for by our fathers and grandfathers, are being taken away. Being a public figure, what I do now, what I say, affects other people and can encourage other people. I turned 82 in jail and I knew that that was important because it meant that a lot of other grey-haired women could say, 'Well, if she can do it, then maybe I can, too.'”
But it's the final question in our interview that really seems to move her. Her face lights up and her voice softens as she recalls the scent that always transports her to a happy place. “I went to a girls' boarding school from [the ages of] 13 to 17. It was in Northern New York and it was so cold in the winter. Snow, snow, snow and cold. And then in the spring, the lilacs would bloom. There were huge lilacs all over the school campus and under my window. And the fragrance of those lilacs still makes me happy. It was, 'Aaahhh, it's going to become warm. There's hope. There's a future.'”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
