“On my bad days I say to myself, ‘Fonda, you’re resilient, and you’ve never stopped trying to get better.’ That’s my mantra, and it’s saved me many, many times.”
At 77, fashion icon Jane Fonda is the most mature woman to ever be on the cover of W Magazine. She’s glowing, glamorous and fit, and looks nothing short of stunning in a Giambattista Valli couture dress and cape.
“I had a vision. I wanted to give a cultural face to older women,” she told W Magazine, proving that your later years can be the best years of your life.
GIFT
One of the top 100 Sexiest Stars in film history and the 32nd Greatest Movie Star of all time, Jane Fonda has appeared on numerous covers of magazines, including two Vogue covers.
With all that, Fonda is a TV star (her Netflix series, Grace and Frankie, began streaming on May 8), philanthropist (the charity she founded works with underprivileged teenage mothers in Atlanta), a fashion icon (it is said that at the Grammys this past February, Rihanna yelled out to her, “Ohmigod! I want to be you when I grow up!”), and an author (she wrote an autobiography, “My Life So Far” in 2005).
Jane Fonda in her 1970 mugshot
MESSAGE
Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her message is to stand up for what you believe in and to make a difference in the world. She protested on America’s occupation of Iraq, visited Sweden in 2006 to support political party FI (Feministic Initiative), marched in Mexico with activists demanding an investigation of the murders of hundreds of women there. She supported the Vietnam anti-war movement, and she has also been involved with a campaign to protect Kenyan girls from genital mutilation.
This quote is very Fonda:
“The only thing you can do is keep going. It’s called resilience. And it’s a very mysterious thing. When I was first starting out, I’d go to auditions, and I knew so many of the gals. Half of them were far more beautiful than me, and the other half were far more talented, but none of those women made it. I’d wonder, Why did it happen for me and not them? Now I think it had to do with that core resilience. I was born that way, and they just weren’t. On my bad days I say to myself, ‘Fonda, you’re resilient, and you’ve never stopped trying to get better.’ That’s my mantra, and it’s saved me many, many times.”
CAUSE
Jane Fonda established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health in 2000. The center, which is located at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is to prevent adolescent pregnancy through training and program development.
Jane Fonda in Emilio Pucci dress in Cannes, 2011
STYLE
Chic style type Jane Fonda has been turning heads since the ‘60s and isn’t stopping now. She wears clean, sleek lines, always modern and appropriate but always tastefully sexy.
A style winner both on screen and on the red carpet, Fonda admits that her relationship with fashion has always been strained. “When I was starting out as an actress in New York, I worked as a model because I needed to pay for acting classes. But I didn’t have what it took to be a model. I hated all the emphasis on how I looked, and I never paid much attention to clothes.”
Yet Jane Fonda confessed that she has always known what she likes on her body… Bingo! Isn’t that the secret of impeccable style.
READ NEXT: See Jane Help: The Powerful Message in Fonda’s New Book