The Oscar-winning actor, Jane Fonda, has succeeded in many roles and areas throughout her life. She is a fitness video pioneer and a best-selling author along with her acting credits.
But there is one part of her life that she says she hasn’t always succeeded in and its motherhood.
The iconic actress from the Fonda dynasty is 85 this year. She is a mother to daughters Mary Williams, 55, and Vanessa Vadim, 54, and son Troy Garity, 49. She talked to CNN’s Chris Wallace recently and said that she’s learned as she has gotten older how to “show up” for her kids.
“I was not the kind of mother that I wished that I had been to my children,” said Fonda. “I have great, great children — talented, smart. And I just didn’t know how to do it.”
“I’ve studied parenting, and I know what it’s supposed to be now. I didn’t know then. So I’m trying to show up now,” she added.
In the interview with Wallace, Fonda shed some tears over her intense relationship with her father, Henry Fonda. She talked about how the two of them bonded shortly before he died.
“It’s so important to try to clear everything up before you go,” the actor said.
Jane Fonda also revealed in September 2022 that she had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. By November, she announced that her cancer was in remission.
This was not her first bout with cancer, in 2010, she had breast cancer and in 2018, she had surgery to remove a cancerous growth on her lip.
Fonda said that she does not fear death. “I’m not scared of dying,” she said, adding, “It’s an adventure. I don’t want to go. I still have a lot to do… But if I discovered that I had cancer again and there was nothing I could do, I’d be OK with it.”
“What I’m really scared of is getting to the end of life with a lot of regrets when there’s no time to do anything about it. It’s one reason I’m trying to get it all done before I come to the end,” she said, laughing.
