The Untold Story of the Fonda Family

The actress everyone saw in Klute and Coming Home was a force of nature—complex, magnetic, intelligent. Jane didn’t inherit her success; she carved it. Those two performances earned her Oscars, but more than that, they cemented her as a voice for a new kind of woman in film: complex, nuanced, and politically aware.

She played call girls, veterans’ wives, women on the edge—and gave each one soul. It wasn’t glamour that defined her. It was the willingness to be raw. With every role, she tested the limits of what female leads could say, feel, and rage against. And she never flinched.