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Jane Fonda has been asked by her publisher to write a new book about having a wonderful third act in life. One can only pray it will be a how-to guide.
While other women approaching their 70th birthday are putting their feet up and playing with the grandchildren, Fonda maintains a pace that would flatten most people half her age.
Since her return to movies with the No. 1 box-office hit Monster In Law in 2005 (you remember, the same year she published My Life So Far, the autobiography that went to No. 1 on the New York Times' best-sellers list), Fonda now has another crowd-pleasing film to promote.
That would be Georgia Rule, a tale of secrets and lies and forgiveness in a dysfunctional family. She co-stars in the film, which opens Friday, with Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman.
Beyond that, Fonda has been busy lately. Very busy.
She has teamed with Gloria Steinem, getting the word out about The Women's Media Center, which Fonda helped found in 2004.
And let's not forget GreenStone Media, the women-owned, women-run national women's talk radio network in the U.S., which launched in fall 2006.
Then there is Fonda's on-going work with the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP), a program she founded in 1995. It would take up the rest of the space on this page to list all the social, medical and humanitarian programs with which Fonda is involved, so we'll stop at G-CAPP.
In the arts, there's a series of educational books on sexuality she is writing for adolescents; there's her work with Steinem and others on Unspinning the Spin: A Guide to Accurate, Bias-Free Language, a project of the Women's Media Centre; and she's looking into some film projects.
And, yes, she also plays with her grandchildren.
Fonda lives near her daughter, Vanessa Vadim, and her grandchildren in Atlanta. (Fonda has had three husbands: Filmmaker Roger Vadim, activist Tom Hayden with whom she has a son -- actor Troy Garrity -- and media mogul Ted Turner.)
Frankly, we're tired just thinking about the work she's doing. Anything else new, Miss Fonda?
"Well, I have a new hip," she says mildly. "And a new fella," she adds, cheerfully.
"I'm very happy. But I was happy before. I've started researching a new book. When I'm busy, I'm very busy, but when I'm not I'm alone in a meditative state. It's perfect. I just came back from 10 days of complete solitude on my ranch."
Hmmnn ... so that's how she does it. The double Oscar winner (best actress in 1971 for Klute, and in 1978 for Coming Home) is heavily involved in programs that educate and empower young women, such as the aforementioned G-CAPP.
"When I was married to Ted Turner, the state of Georgia had the highest rate of unwanted teenage pregnancies in the country," Fonda says. "I was a U.N. ambassador at that time, and when I went to some of the conferences, I learned that the way you stop girls from having babies when they're too young is to give them power over their lives. You give them education, empowerment, self-respect and hope. Hope is the best contraception."
Thanks to the work done by G-CAPP, Georgia no longer leads the nation in unwanted teen pregnancies.
"It's a real calling for me. As an adolescent, I had a lot of privilege, but I didn't have agency over my body or my life and I had no one to talk to, so it's an issue that touches me very much."
In her 2005 autobiography, My Life So Far, Fonda wrote extensively about her own adolescence, about her mother's suicide when she was 12, and about her famous father's coldness toward her.
Indeed, there is a vulnerability about Fonda that seems rooted in the insecurity and heartbreak of that childhood. It's hard to reconcile with her larger-than-life public persona and her many adult claims to fame: movie star, political activist, feminist, producer, workout goddess (23 home exercise videos, and the original Jane Fonda's Workout video remains the top-grossing home video of all time), best-selling author and humanitarian. She has lived in the public eye for more than 40 years, long enough for Barbarella -- the sexy, science-fiction movie that really made her a household name in 1968 -- to be remade.
What about that?
"I wish I were doing it," she says, wistfully.
Fonda went so far as to have a chat about the remake of Barbarella with producer Dino De Laurentiis, "just to give him my thoughts on how it might be made. But he was already going in his own direction."
Still, she wouldn't mind a forum for her ideas on the movie, which involve a 70-year-old Barbarella -- "an elder from a planet where they know about intimacy and love and laughter." And want to share that knowledge,too, she says.
In the meantime, Fonda is happy to be one of the stars of Georgia Rule. And Internet chatter to the contrary, she is a big fan of Lindsay Lohan's. The film, in which Fonda plays Lohan's strict grandmother, touches on tough themes, including alcoholism and incest.
"I think Lindsay was just fantastic," says Fonda, praising the young actress. "Some of her fans saw Georgia Rule and loved it." Then she adds, "They came out saying, 'Who was that old broad?'" and she laughs.
Would the old broad in question have anything else on her to-do list that she cares to mention?
She says, "My ambition before I die is to make a movie about sex for people over 70."