She has declared herself to be in Act 3 of her life, and Academy Award winner Jane Fonda is making the most of it. In part, she is promoting the story of the first two acts in her 2005 autobiography, "My Life So Far." It's her extremely candid approach to the growing pains and legendary missteps that make it such a compelling read. Fonda, 68, reveals her battle with bulimia, her insecurities, her emotionally distant father, Henry Fonda, and her activism. The soft cover has just been released and includes a new introduction by Fonda and a DVD.

Here are excerpts of a Q&A with the star.

Q: Probably the bravest thing you've done so far was writing such a candid account.

A: Well, I don't know about brave, but it's certainly the most important thing I've ever done.

Q: It seems like you didn't leave anything out.

A: Oh, I left plenty out. But nothing important in terms of delineating the general journey that I took. Oh, but there's a lot that I didn't write.

Q: You do talk about swimming with naked Garbo in the book. What a moment. In the DVD you mention you skinny-dipped with Michael Jackson, too?

A: Yeah (laughing). Yes, the book was too long, so I didn't include that. It was while I was making "On Golden Pond," he (Jackson) came and stayed with me for a while.

Q: OK, I must say it's hard to think of Jane Fonda having a hip replacement.

A: Yeah, I know it's not exactly my image either (laughing). Everything is fine. It worked. I may have to have more done. It was partly the bulimia and genetics. Some people just suffer from osteoarthritis.

Q: You've admitted to some plastic surgery in the past, but no more?

A: No more. I'm not going to do it again. I am going to let it go. People in the rest of the world own their faces and it just seems sad to me. I want us to do the same. So I will try to be an example.

Q: You talk about your first husband, Roger Vadim, claiming never to be jealous. How about you?

A: Yeah, yeah. Jealous, hurt feelings. These things played on my sense of not being good enough.

Q: Those threesomes with Vadim and people he would bring home are fascinating _ you didn't have to reveal that. Do you cringe at the thought or take it in historic stride?

A: I take it in historic stride, and I'm not surprised how many letters I've gotten from other women who say, "My God, I thought I was the only one. Thank you for letting me know I'm not the only one."

Q: Were there a lot of things, or one defining moment, that led up to you realizing you are perfect enough?

A: Not perfect, not perfect. Trying to be perfect is not a good thing (laughing). We are not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be complete. You know? Let's see if I can summarize it. I was in a marriage that I really wanted to work. Ted Turner. Because of that, I worked very hard on myself to become _ to get over my fear of intimacy.

When I turned 60 I realized I wasn't afraid of dying, but I was afraid of having regrets at the end of my life when it was too late to do anything about it. One of the regrets would be not experiencing a truly intimate relationship. You know, where two whole people bring their full selves to the table. I had never done that because I didn't feel good enough. So I kind of made a deal with myself going into my third act in my 60s, that I was going to do what I needed to do to get well and achieve intimacy. The problem was that my husband kind of liked me better before (laughing). I was not alone, because I was with myself for the first time. I ended up single, very happy I might add.

Q: Are you dating anyone right now?

A: No, no. I haven't met anyone I want to date.

Q: You've been a couple and you've been uncoupled. Which do you prefer?

A: Well, I believe in coupling. It's in relationship that you grow and develop. It is within relationship that the buttons get pressed and you realize what you still have to work on. So, I like relationship. I like coupling. I'm very happy single. However, that wouldn't have been true any other time in my life. It took me a long time to get here. Which means, if I ever do fall in love again it will be a very different kind of relationship.

Q: There are a lot of people who don't like you based on your visit to Hanoi during the Vietnam War. It seems to have eclipsed some wonderful work of yours in movies, including "Klute," "Barefoot in the Park," "Julia" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" Did writing the book in part act as an explanation?

A: I needed to, you know, put it into context. What was going on at the time that motivated me to do something that was clearly controversial? What was the result of that, and do I regret it? Not at all. Hundreds of Americans had gone. Nobody was the kind of celebrity that I was, but it was a time when we needed to do things that were beyond what had happened before, because it was such a catastrophic situation. Nixon was trying to convince the American people the war was ending. Because the ground troops had come home, people believed it. But, he was, in fact, escalating the war by air and with new and even more heinous types of bombs, which he was using on North Vietnam. We received word in the spring of 1972 from European journalists and diplomats that it appeared that the dikes of North Vietnam were being targeted. It's like Holland _ it's below sea level. If the dikes are ruined before the monsoon season, according to (Henry) Kissinger, hundreds of thousands of people could die. So that's why I went. To see if it's true and, if so, can I document it and blow the lid off it. And I did.

Q: Do you wonder what has happened to that kind of activism?

A: Well, it's there. Because there's no draft, at least the kind of draft there used to be, people are being drafted for economic reasons now. Because of poverty, it's a way to earn money and pay for college and so forth, but there's no draft so that makes a difference. There is an antiwar movement. What's so interesting is, so much of it is composed of (Iraq war) veterans, who have come back. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Gold Star Mothers Against the War, military families speak out. Cindy Sheehan is kind of the best-known example. This is a very vibrant movement. The right-wingers have convinced too many people that if you are opposed to the war, you are opposed to the troops. That is totally not true. You can be opposed to the war and support the troops, which was the case during the Vietnam War.

Q: Well, this antiwar movement does not seem to be getting as much press.

A: There's a lot that's not reported in the press. When I became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement it was like seven years into the war. I came late to it. It takes a while for a movement to grow.

Q: So, how is the third act going so far?

A: It's going great. I'm eight years into it and I've never been happier in my life. And that's the truth. You know each of the acts has a title and the third act is called "Beginnings," 'cause that's what it feels like.

 

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Patricia Sheridan can be reached at psheridan(at)post-gazette.com.)

 

 

 

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)