Jane Fonda is giving up plastic surgery at 82
Jane Fonda speaks at at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on February 15. Photo: Getty
Jane Fonda has revealed that at age 82, she’s giving up one of her long-standing life companions: plastic surgery.
“I can’t pretend that I’m not vain, but there isn’t going to be any more plastic surgery. I’m not going to cut myself up any more,” Fonda said in an interview with Elle Canada.
Despite her openness about giving up the knife, the double Oscar winner hinted it was a tough decision especially because of her past body image battles including fighting bulimia until she was in her 40s.
“I have to work every day to be self-accepting. It doesn’t come easy to me,” she said.
Fonda in May supporting “migrant women fighting to keep their families together”. Photo: Instagram
Fonda’s revelation comes two years after she ticked off former NBC anchor Megyn Kelly (played by Charlize Theron in 2019’s Bombshell) for bringing up her past plastic surgeries.
When Kelly questioned why the actor has previously admitted she’s not proud of getting work done, Fonda said: “We really want to talk about that now?”
She later said the question was “inappropriate”.
In 2018, in her HBO documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts, she was less prickly about work she’s had done, including face lifts, breast implants (which she later had removed), and jawline and eye procedures.
“I’m glad I look good for my age, but I’ve had plastic surgery. I got tired of looking tired when I wasn’t,” the Grace and Frankie star said.
“On one level, I hate the fact that I’ve had the need to alter myself physically to feel that I’m OK. I wish I wasn’t like that.
“I wish I was braver. But I am what I am.”
In the show, she said she loves faces that are “older” and “lived in”, nominating fellow octogenarian actor Vanessa Redgrave’s as a particular favourite.
The star with Jon Voight at the 1979 Oscars.
Despite ongoing anxiety about her looks, Fonda told Elle she tries to be honest to herself and her followers on her social media accounts despite it being a “long and continuing struggle” for her.
“I post pictures of me looking haggard – and once with my tooth out! This is a fake tooth,” Fonda said, pointing at a front incisor.
“It came out in a restaurant in Portugal, and I posted it.”
Still she admitted there are “certain emotional disabilities you pick up when you are young that you can’t entirely undo” and said she has “psychic scars” she will carry forever.
Some of her insecurities stem from growing up in a time when “the thinking was that women were like cats, competing with each other, knocking each other down”.
“You learn to manage them. You learn to banish them to the corner and put a dunce cap on them and forbid them to come out.”
Although she’s giving up plastic surgery, Fonda ramped up her dedication to political activism in 2019 by initiating Fire Drill Fridays in Washington every week since October to protest inaction on climate change.
Fonda is arrested in November at a Fire Drill Friday rally. Photo: Instagram
Arrested four times since for civil disobedience, she vowed in November that her signature red coat will be “the last article of clothing I will ever buy”.
At the Oscars in February she presented the best picture award to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite wearing a new silver pixie cut and a gown she previously wore to the Grace of Monaco premiere at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Fonda was also wearing “ethically harvested” gold jewellery, she said.
“Nothing good ever happened without mass movement – and we need a mass movement now to focus on climate change”, she told Elle.