Oscar-winning actress and author Jane Fonda is passionate about living life to the fullest at any age. In her new book, Prime Time, due from Random House in early fall, she writes about "Act III of life" (age 60 and up) with a gusto and enthusiasm she hopes will be contagious. "I adored writing it," Fonda tells Show Daily, adding that she wants people, women in particular, to be "much more hopeful" about aging.
She adds, "Ageism is alive and well and horribly destructive. Yes, I am getting older and my body may be in decline, but my sense of well-being, my wisdom, and my ability to use what I have learned is very much alive and well. This can be an extremely rich time of life. I have found it to be so."
Fashioned as a practical lifestyle manual rather than a memoir, Prime Time covers everything from exercise, intimacy, sex, love, friendship, mind-body awareness, and spirituality to giving back, healthy lifestyle choices, financial planning, and even quantum physics.
Mixing her own life experiences with extensive research and interviewing was a challenge, admits Fonda. "Doing a biography is very different from doing a book like this. I knew I had to think very hard about all the things I would want to know about aging—what I have learned and what was meaningful to me—that I would have wanted to know at age 40." She believes that "growth and wisdom" come from the writing process, and through it she has discovered her deep interest in "the whole concept of the human spirit evolving."
Fonda remains an advocate of environmental issues, human rights, and the empowerment of women and girls. In 1995 she founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and in 2002 opened the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University. She is also a member of the Women & Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. With a new set of fitness DVDs, also called Prime Time, and two movies awaiting release, Et si on vivait tous ensemble? (And if We All Lived Together?) and Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, she remains very busy.
Fonda says she enjoys traveling to bookstores around the country and is very excited to be at BEA. "These are people that love books, they love the feel of books, and they love authors. It makes me happy to be around booksellers and people who write."
Fonda will participate in the Uptown Stage: Insight Stage Signature Event at 1:30 p.m. today and will be signing ARCs afterward.
