Jane Fonda thought 'drugs and loneliness' would kill her before age 30
Published in Entertainment News
Jane Fonda isn’t “afraid of aging” nor dying, but the Hollywood icon and activist admits she assumed she’d succumb to “drugs and loneliness” before the age of 30.
The two-time Oscar winner, who will celebrate her 88th birthday next month, told Michelle Obama’s limited series podcast, “The Look,” that she “didn’t think [she’d] live past 30.”
“My mother died when I was 12,” Fonda said, referencing how her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, died by suicide in 1950. “My youth was not especially happy and I thought I was gonna die… I’m not addictive, but I thought I was gonna die from drugs and loneliness. So the fact that I’m almost 88 is astonishing to me. And what is even more astonishing is that I’m better now. … I wouldn’t go back for anything.”
The “Grace and Frankie” star also shared in the podcast that she’s “never been afraid of aging” and “more importantly … not afraid of dying,” though she is “afraid of dying with a lot of regrets,” as was the case for her father Henry Fonda.
In recent decades, that principle has “guided” Fonda, who has “been living to not have regrets.”
Prior to 1970, the Emmy winner acknowledged she was living a “quite hedonistic and quite superficial life” but believes “old age is fantastic, if it’s lived intentionally.”
“Light makes sense of dark,” Fonda said, adding that she prefers being older. “Noise makes sense of silence. Death makes sense of life. And if you don’t deal with it, you’re not really living fully, I think.”
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