See Jane Run

Does Jane Fonda— actress, activist, writer, fitness tycoon, mother, perpetual Self reinventer, and ultimate survivor— ever stop?

- Brooks Barnes

Jane Fonda is fuming. Seething. It’s late morning, and she’s sitting in the kitchen of her Beverly Hills condo in a white baseball cap, sunglasses, and fancy sweats. Her dog, a fluffy coton de Tuléar named Tulea, is also in an agitated state, scampering in circles on the tile floor. Fonda, 79, jabs a finger toward a garbage can as explanation. It’s the trash container’s fault?

Not quite. Stuffed inside is her morning New York Times, with front page articles about President Trump’s ad-libbed “fire and fury” threat toward North Korea. “I’m almost 80, and so to say that I’ve never experienced this kind of nightmare before in my life is saying something,” she tells me, fidgeting anxiously. We talk about Trump for a few minutes—let her get it out of her system, I figure—before I gently try to steer the conversation toward her latest career resurgence.

“Who gives a rat’s ass?” she says. My eyes widen. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just that, with everything going on in the world, our country, it’s really hard to talk about myself or entertainment right now.”