Jane Fonda: How I look this good at 73!

Her private life hasn’t always been a success but now, aged 73 and living life on her own terms, Jane tells LINA DAS, ‘I’m the happiest I’ve ever been’.

There have been many incarnations of Jane Fonda over the years, but the one common denominator has been the enthusiasm with which she has embraced them all. Whether she was vamping it up as screen goddess Barbarella, campaigning against the Vietnam war as Hanoi Jane, or donning legwarmers for her work-out videos and exhorting women to “feel the burn”, Jane has never shown less than 100 per cent commitment to all of her endeavours. It’s a commitment that can be fascinating, inspiring and, frankly, exhausting to watch, but if anyone thought that Jane, now 73, might be slipping quietly into her dotage, they’d be mistaken.

Her latest project tackles the thorniest subject of all – ageing – and if anything, she’s even more impassioned now than ever. “I made a list of everything I would have wanted to know when I was in my forties about getting older,” she says, “and decided to write a book about it. The list ranged from what sex is going to be like, to how to meet new people, to exercise, to what happens to your brain as you get older.” Jane’s book, Prime Time, is a comprehensive guide to living well in the “third act” – the term she uses to describe the final three decades of her life. It is a warm, informative and incredibly life-affirming book.

Nor does she hide the fact she has made some very public mistakes on the path to where she is now. “If people can learn anything from me it’s that I’ve not always been happy and I’ve not always been strong,” she says. “When I was 20, I thought I was going to die of loneliness, I was so unhappy. But as I’ve got older, I’ve found myself growing happier, and I wanted to understand why.” Certainly Jane looks pretty chirpy, as well as vibrant, healthy and exceptionally taut. We meet in the home of her boyfriend, music mogul Richard Perry – “my honey” as she refers to him – with Jane bounding into the living room in tight tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt.

Photos of her in Cannes a few months ago showed her looking magnificent in a Pucci gown. “But it takes a village!” she laughs. “There’s a hair person, a make-up person, a stylist – it doesn’t just happen. I exercise regularly – five or six days a week if I can – even though I’ve had a hip and knee replacement. If I hadn’t gone back to working out, I would not be the person I am today, not only physically but mentally, too, because being active physically as you get older is so important. “I also watch what I eat, I meditate, I have enough money to get a trainer and have massages, and I’ve had plastic surgery. I have a genetic problem with bags under my eyes, and years ago I had the fat removed from my eyelids and the jowls corrected. But I didn’t have the wrinkles taken away,” she insists. “I still wanted to look like me, only a more rested me.”