50 facts about Jane Fonda

50 facts about two-time Academy Award winner, Jane Fonda.

1. Jane Fonda was born as Jayne Seymour Fonda.

2. She was born in New York City.

3. Her father Henry Fonda was also actor.

4. Her mother was a Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour.

5. According to her father, their surname came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1500s.

6. She also has English, Scottish, and French ancestry.

7. She was named for the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother's side.

8. She has a brother, Peter, an actor.

9. She also has a maternal half-sister, Frances de Villers Brokaw, whose daughter is Pilar Corrias, owner of Pilar Corrias Gallery in London.

10. Fonda's father married socialite Susan Blanchard, just nine years his daughter's senior; this marriage ended in divorce.

11. At 15 Fonda taught dance at Fire Island Pines, New York.

12. She attended Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut.

13. Fonda attended the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, where she was an undistinguished student.

14. Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice.

15. Jane Fonda is not only an actress but also writer, political activist, former fashion model and fitness guru.

16. She is a two-time Academy Award winner.

17. In 2014, she was the recipient of the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award.

18. Fonda made her Broadway debut in the 1960 play There Was a Little Girl.

19. For the role in There Was a Little Girl, she received the first of two Tony Award nominations.

20. She made her screen debut in Tall Story.

21. She rose to fame in 1960s films such as Period of Adjustment, Sunday in New York, Cat Ballou, Barefoot in the Park and Barbarella.

22. Her first husband was Barbarella director Roger Vadim.

23. A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They.

24. Went on to win two Best Actress Oscars in the 1970s for Klute and Coming Home.

25. Her other nominations were for Julia, The China Syndrome, On Golden Pond and The Morning After.

26. Her other major competitive awards include an Emmy Award for the 1984 TV film The Dollmaker, two BAFTA Awards for Julia and The China Syndrome and four Golden Globe Awards.

27. In 1982, she released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies.

28. Divorced from second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting.

29. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the 2005 comedy Monster in Law.

30. In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45-year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom, has earned her two Emmy Award nominations.

31. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012.

32. Fonda was a visible political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War and has been more recently involved in advocacy for women.

33. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist.

34. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization.

35. She published an autobiography in 2005.

36. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time.

37. Fonda became interested in acting in 1954, while appearing with her father in a charity performance of The Country Girl, at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

38. After dropping out of Vassar, she went to Paris for two years to study art.

39. Upon returning to the states, in 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and the meeting changed the course of her life, Fonda saying, "I went to the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father - who had to say so - told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!"

40. For many years Fonda took ballet class to keep fit, but after fracturing her foot while filming The China Syndrome, she was no longer able to participate.

41. She began participating in aerobics and strengthening exercises under the direction of Leni Cazden.

42. The Leni Workout became the Jane Fonda Workout, which began a second career for her, continuing for many years. This was considered one of the influences that started the fitness craze among baby boomers, then approaching middle age.

43. In 1982, Fonda released her first exercise video, titled Jane Fonda's Workout, inspired by her best-selling book, Jane Fonda's Workout Book.

44. Jane Fonda's Workout became the highest selling home video of the next few years, selling over a million copies. The video's release led many people to buy the then-new VCR in order to watch and perform the workout at home.

45. She would subsequently release 23 workout videos with the series selling a total of 17 million copies combined, more than any other exercise series.

46. She released five workout books and thirteen audio programs, through 1995.

47. In the early 1990s, after three decades in film, Fonda announced her retirement from the film industry.

48. In 1982, Fonda and Hayden unofficially adopted an African-American teenager, Mary Luana Williams (known as Lulu), who was the daughter of members of the Black Panthers.

49. She married her third husband, cable-television tycoon and CNN founder Ted Turner, on December 21, 1991 at a ranch near Capps, Florida. The pair divorced on May 22, 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia.

50. Fonda grew up an atheist, but turned to Christianity in the early 2000s. She describes her beliefs as being "outside of established religion", with a more feminist slant, and views God as something that "lives within each of us as Spirit (or soul)."