On the final, unseasonably hot Friday afternoon of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, everyone at the Palais was sweating except for Jane Fonda, who took the stage in a chic gray suit for a 90-minute conversation about her decades-long career as an actress and activist.
Fonda was disarmingly open, answering every question from the moderator and energetic audience: She spoke alternately about being in love with and despising her various co-stars over the years. She talked about never wanting to do another movie in the vein of Book Club: The Next Chapter or 80 for Brady.
She remembered getting drunk to film her opening striptease in Barbarella. And she insulted Jean-Luc Godard and told an incredible story about competing for an Oscar with Katharine Hepburn.
