On September 18 a sold-out crowd of over 300 (mostly women) attended Corewell Health’s held at the Franklin Hills Country Club to hear keynote speaker Jane Fonda, the two-time Oscar winning actor, author, and activist.
Fonda, 86, mostly reflected upon aging and her self-reflection journey in a 20-minute talk. She then participated in a question-and-answer session with WXYZ-TV news anchor Carolyn Clifford.
Heart to Heart Chair Debra Ernst, who also spoke, said that “funds raised at the event will go toward supporting the expansion of the heart failure program at in Royal Oak and provide resources to help under-and uninsured women receive cardiovascular care.” Ernst and her husband Max have donated millions to the hospital to create the Max and Debra Ernst Heart Center.A Corewell Health Foundation representative stated that the event raised $375,000.
Two days earlier Fonda addressed dozens of Kamala Harris volunteers at the campaign’s Ann Arbor headquarters and went door to door in an Ann Arbor neighborhood canvassing for Harris. The following day she participated in a climate talk at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium.
Fonda told the lunch crowd at the Franklin Hills Country Club that “I was told to not talk about certain things, so I’ll talk about other things.”
Fonda began her remarks by stating that she “loves Michigan” and then mentioned her connections to the state.
“I’ve been all over here, most of the time dragging Lily Tomlin. She’s from Detroit and gives me street cred. My first lover was from Grosse Pointe and I later married Tom Hayden who was from Royal Oak, went to U of M, and was editor of the Michigan Daily. My last boyfriend, Richard Perry (record producer) also went to U of M and I was very good friends with Florine Mark (former president and CEO of Weight Watchers Group Inc.) and I miss her dearly.”
She then shared very personal reflections on her life.
“When I was younger and even in my 30s, if you had told me that I would live to 86 and that I would be doing ok and still have a career, I would have told you that you were out of your mind,” Fonda told the audience.
Fonda recounted that on her 59th birthday while married to (media mogul) Ted Turner, her last of three husbands, she decided to reexamine her life.
“‘I thought, ‘How am I supposed to live in my third act, [ages 60-90]?’ In order to know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been, so I spent a year researching myself. I have 20,000 pages of FBI files, and my father loved to make home movies, so I had movies and old interviews. And one of things I learned was that I was brave and that I was worthy of being loved which had an effect on my marriage. So I left. ”
Fonda also said that she is not afraid of dying.
“I am really afraid of getting to the end of life with regrets when it’s too late to do anything about it. So recently I went into therapy and I strongly recommend it. I wanted to learn why I wasn’t a better parent.”
At the Q and A session with Clifford, Fonda revealed that the highlight of her acting career was “working with my dad (Henry Fonda) in On Golden Pond.” She noted he was dying of a rare heart disease during the filming of the 1981 Oscar-winning movie, which she produced and co-starred in, playing his daughter. Henry Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor that year but could not attend the March 1982 ceremony due to his health and he died five months later.
The talk then moved to Fonda’s youthful appearance. Clifford told Fonda that she looked fabulous and was asked what was her secret.
Fonda responded in part:
“I’m happy. I thought I was going to die at 35. My shoulders, my hips, my knees, my back, it’s all metal. I view it that I’m so lucky to be alive.” The fitness guru also noted that she still works out, but now “the mantra is slow. It’s like sex. But I’ve been told not to talk about sex…But when I look at my workout (videos) and everything was so fast…Now you do the same thing, but you do it slower with light weights. So I work out , I sleep nine hours a day, and I think that really helps.”
Fonda — who mentioned that much of what she talked about is in her 2012 New York Times best-selling book “Prime Time” — left the audience with another word of advice.
“One of the things I learned writing about my life is that it’s not the experiences that you’ve had that makes you a wise person, it’s reflecting on those experiences that makes you a wise person,” she said. “It certainly changed my life when I started doing that.”
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