Los Angeles - Movie star, fitness guru and activist Jane Fonda has aged but remained consistent in all the things that matter to her.
Veteran Hollywood star Jane Fonda holds her golden heart award for her support of teenage girls, which she received late 15 December 2007 at a special charity gala occasion entitled 'A Heart for Children'. Fonda, who will be 70 on 21 December, was presented with the award during a life broadcast gala ceremony. Fonda founded an organisation in 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia that helps protect teenage girls from unwanted pregnancies. EPA/MICHAEL KAPPELER
Fonda, who played a sexy role in the '60s movie Barbarella and who still is winning major roles, would still show some skin on the silver screen.
'I want to make an erotic movie about a woman over 70,' she told USA Today in an article published in October. 'There's this cultural vacuum that, when you a hit certain age, you're not sexual anymore. The contrary is true. We'll see if I can do it, got to get it written first. I've already mapped out the love scene.'
That's easy to believe coming from the attractive senior citizen, who turns 70 on December 21.
Fonda is also remembered, and in some circles detested, as a fierce Vietnam War protestor. And she's still taking it to the streets, these days against the war in Iraq.
In January 2007, she joined 10,000 people in a demonstration in Washington against the Bush administration's Iraq war policy.
She stood out at the rally not just as a Hollywood celebrity but because so many Americans have not forgiven her visit to Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital, in 1972. The Vietnam War was still being fought, and she allowed herself to be photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery used against US aircrews, and was indelibly stamped with the hostile nickname of Hanoi Jane.
Fonda's private life has been no less turbulent.
She has divorced three times. Her new boyfriend, New York businessman Lynden Gillis, 73, was at her side in October at the Rome Film Festival.
In May, they strolled the red carpet together at the New York premiere of Fonda's latest film, Georgia Rule. In that movie, Fonda portrayed a strict grandmother who fires up a rebellious granddaughter, played by Lindsay Lohan.
Two years earlier in the romantic comedy Monster-In-Law, Fonda had the role of a future mother-in-law who made life hell for her future daughter-in-law, played by Jennifer Lopez. Prior to that movie, it had been 15 years since Fonda appeared on screen.
Acting is a family vocation for Fonda, the daughter of stage and film star Henry Fonda and sister of actor Peter Fonda.
At the age of 12, Jane Fonda had to cope with her mother's suicide, and was sent to Connecticut to be raised by her grandmother. After graduating from elite Vassar College, Fonda initially pursued painting and piano in Paris and also tried her hand as a journalist.
But in the late 1950s, she met Lee Strasberg, founder of New York's famous Actors Studio. She learned the craft from him and found rapid success.
In 1960, Fonda was named best new actress by New York film critics for her debut in Tall Story. Shortly afterward, she followed the French director Roger Vadim, who had discovered Brigitte Bardot, to Paris, and he immediately gave Fonda four roles, including the starring role in the sexy science-fiction film Barbarella. She rocketed to world stardom and became Vadim's wife.
A short time later, back in Hollywood, Fonda earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a marathon dancer in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Two years later, she won the coveted statuette for her starring role in Klute. She grabbed a second Oscar in 1978 for Coming Home, a film that grappled with the bitter results of the Vietnam War.
But the engaging roles and status of a Hollywood star were not enough for Fonda. She always stood publicly and uncompromisingly behind her political views.
In the face of bitter opposition from the Pentagon, Fonda went on an anti-war rallying tour of Vietnam with actor Donald Sutherland, her Klute co-star. At the side of her second husband, radical activist Tom Hayden, she championed women's equality and civil rights.
More starring roles followed, and commercial successes with the movies The China Syndrome in 1979 and On Golden Pond in 1981, the only film in which Fonda starred with her father, who was terminally ill when the film was being shot.
Between acting and political activism, Fonda found time to make workout videos that helped touch off a fitness wave in the US, starting in 1982. She created a fitness empire with aerobic and later stretch and yoga videos, whose value has been estimated at more than 600 million dollars.
Her third husband, CNN founder Ted Turner, was the first to slow her pace. They were married for 10 years until their 2001 divorce.
Vanessa Vadim, Fonda's daughter with her first husband, has made her a grandmother, and her son with Tom Hayden, Troy Garity, carries on the family acting tradition.
In May, Fonda received a seldom-bestowed honor at the Cannes Film Festival - a Golden Palm for lifetime achievement. In the festival's 60-year history, only three others - French directors Alain Resnais and Gerard Oury and actress Jeanne Moreau - have received Golden Palms in recognition of their life's work.
'You are a woman who fights and wins,' said festival President Gilles Jacob in awarding Fonda the prize. She said it made her feel 'overwhelmed.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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