9 reasons it’s about time Jane Fonda received the Cecil B. DeMille award

Jane Fonda will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award at Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony (watch live Feb 28 at 8pET on CTV) and frankly, it’s about time. The actor, activist and aerobics innovator has been forging her own path in Hollywood and beyond for the past six decades, using her platform to bring attention to important causes, whether through her work as an activist or her film and TV roles.

At 83, Fonda shows no signs of slowing down. She released her latest book, a memoir about her work on climate change, in 2020, and is set to reprise her role opposite longtime friend Lily Tomlin in the final season of Grace and Frankie. Between her frequent arrests during Fire Drill Friday protests, her ongoing acting projects, and her commitment to her family, including her children and grandchildren, Fonda has devoted her life to being a fearless advocate for others and one of the greatest actors of all time.

To celebrate Fonda’s upcoming award, we are looking back at her incredible life and counting down nine of the reasons this honour is long overdue for the Hollywood legend.

1. She's been dominating the stage and screen for six decades

Fonda’s father, Henry Fonda, was one of the most famous and beloved American actors of the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s, starring in iconic movies like The Grapes of Wrath and 12 Angry Men. But it wasn’t until Jane received encouragement from famed acting coach Lee Strasberg that she decided to pursue a career in acting, entering the business in her early 20s.

She made her debut on Broadway in There Was A Little Girl in 1960, earning a Tony nomination for her role. Fonda continued to work on stage and eventually moved into film. She’s appeared in films in every decade since her debut feature Tall Story in 1960 and has also starred in a handful of TV shows, including The Newsroom and Grace and Frankie.

2. She was an activist before it was cool 

We're now in a period of celebrity culture where it’s bad business to not take a political stand (think: Taylor Swift being criticized for years before coming out as a Democrat). In the 1960s, Fonda put her successful acting career (and her freedom) on the line when she became an outspoken opponent to the Vietnam War and a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and Indigenous causes.

Fonda traveled through Canada and the US touring colleges and speaking out against the Vietnam War in the '60s and '70s, eventually traveling to Hanoi and seeing firsthand the devastation caused by the war. While there, Fonda was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, an action she has continually apologized for in the years since.

The photograph threatened to end her career (as did her 1970 detention for smuggling "drugs" that were actually vitamins), but Fonda’s dedication as an actor and activist helped her endure the intense backlash and persevere. Years later, Jane discovered that she had also unknowingly been the subject of an FBI surveillance plot to charge her with sedition. 

3. She's a champion for women. All women.

In addition to her work as a political activist, Fonda has been a long-time proponent of women’s rights. She started the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health in 2001, which aims to help decrease the rate of teen pregnancy. In 2005, she co-founded the Women’s Media Center with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. The WMC provides media training and helps to amplify women’s voices in media.

Fonda has also spoken out throughout her career about the unattainable beauty standards for women. On her website, Fonda writes, “when we take up the exhausting burden of denying our age, we are also denying who we are. To the extent we succeed in passing as younger, we abandon where we’ve been. We rob ourselves of genuine pride in the years we’ve really lived. And we separate ourselves from the women who may show signs of aging more quickly, at a time when closeness with other women can give us strength, solace and validation. Our lives end up consisting of three phases: being young, pretending to be young, and old age. The whole rich middle period is lost. As an actress I can tell you Act Three can be pretty shaky when Act Two is missing.”

Fonda has also made a point recently to champion intersectional feminism and stand up for ALL women, including those historically left behind by feminist movements like women of colour, queer women, trans women, poor women and other marginalized groups. 

4. She's inspired millions to feel the burn

Before every celebrity was sharing their workouts on Instagram and posing on the cover of Shape (she did that in 1987 btw), Jane Fonda was the OG celeb fitness motivator. In an effort to help raise funds for her work as an activist, Fonda created Jane Fonda’s Workout, which started as a best-selling book and eventually became an at-home workout video.

Released in 1982, the exercise video would become her first of 24 videos, leading the way for more books and audio programs on working out. Credited with helping get Baby Boomers in shape and growing the new VCR market, Jane Fonda’s Workout remains one of the highest-selling VHSs of all time. That’s a lot of toned butts.

5. She uses her platform to get political

Fonda has never shied away from sharing her politics and most recently, the actor and activist did her part to inspire young Americans to get out and vote. Encouraging voter registration for the 2020 election, Fonda revisited her beloved exercise videos and brought along fellow A-listers like Kerry Washington, Amy Schumer, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom to throw on their brightest headbands and help spread critical information about voter registration. 

6. She's literally saving the world

In recent years, Fonda has concentrated her activism on climate change. Most famously, she moved to Washington, D.C. and helped create Fire Drill Fridays along with Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard. The weekly event features Fonda and other activists, including several of her famous friends, protesting the governments’ lack of response to climate change.

In 2020, Fonda released the book What Can I Do? My Path From Climate Despair to Action and wrote about the need for immediate action, detailing steps readers can take to help curb the effects of climate change in their own community.

7. She's made her own name

As the daughter of Henry Fonda and the ex-wife of three powerful men (director Roger Vadim, activist Tom Hayden and media tycoon Ted Turner), Fonda’s narrative could have been defined by the men in her life.

In her 2018 documentary Jane Fonda: In Five Acts, the actor and activist talks about her years searching for her identity in her relationships with men. Eventually, Fonda was able to forge her own path separate from her father and ex-husbands, taking on acting roles and causes that spoke to her, including her involvement in women’s rights issues and the critically and commercially successful 9 to 5, which helped open a dialogue around women’s equality in the workplace.

8. She's mastered every genre

During her 60-year career on the stage, big screen and small screen, Fonda has shown there’s no genre she can’t master. The celebrated actor has proven herself a serious thespian (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Klute), a comedic actor (Grace and Frankie, Fun with Dick and Jane), a romantic lead (Our Souls At Night, Barefoot in the Park) and an actor who can portray historical figures (The Butler).

Fonda has enjoyed some of her biggest successes by pulling from her real life, including using her experience helping returning Vietnam War vets in Coming Home and putting her fractured relationship with her father Henry Fonda on screen in On Golden Pond.

9. She's won every other award

All that work on the stage and screen amassed an incredible legacy of awards. Almost 50 years after that initial Tony nomination for her 1960 Broadway debut in There Was a Little Girl, Fonda received her second Tony nom for 33 Variations in 2009. Fonda has been nominated for four SAG Awards and won two BAFTA Awards for Best Actress, first in 1978 for Julia and then again the following year for The China Syndrome.

Jane’s twice won an Academy Award for Best Actress and was nominated in 1981 for Best Supporting Actress for her role in On Golden Pond, in which she starred opposite her father. Henry Fonda won for Best Actor shortly before his death and the pair remain the only father-daughter duo to be nominated the same year. When Fonda accepts the Cecil B. DeMille Award during Sunday’s Golden Globes, it will be her eighth Globe starting with New Star of the Year in 1960.

Watch The 78th Golden Globe Awards live Sunday, February 28 at 8pET on CTV.

BEFORE YOU GO: Regina King is one of three women recognized in 2021 Golden Globes Best Director category

[video_embed id='2132448']BEFORE YOU GO: Regina King is one of three women recognized in 2021 Golden Globes Best Director category [/video_embed]