Jane Fonda, nominated as Best supporting actress for playing an aging Hollywood movie star in Youth, explains why she chose this role. “I wanted to work with Paolo Sorrentino even before I read the script, because I had seen Il Divo and The Great Beauty, and directors like this don't come along all the time. In my opinion he is in the school of Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, real masters of their craft; he is a cinema auteur, he writes it, he directs it, he knows exactly what he wants, he creates works of art.”The daughter of Henry Fonda, Jane started her acting career in the early 60s. “When you're the child of a movie actor, you think you’ll end up doing that, and so I did; but it's really weird, I didn't enjoy acting very much in the beginning, in the 60s; I only did it because I was fired as a secretary and I had to earn a living…”The Hollywood Foreign Press recognized her potential right away, giving her an International Recognition award “as most likely to achieve prominence during the coming year” in 1962, after her first film, Tall Story by Joshua Logan.Fonda played opposite Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park (1967) from the Neil Simon play, starred in Barbarella (1968) directed by Roger Vadim. “During the 70s I really enjoyed acting, because I was producing my own movies, Nine to Five with Lily Tomlin, Coming Home with Jon Voight, China Syndrome with Michael Douglas.” The HFPA honored her work with Best Actress Golden Globes for Klute directed by Alan Pakula, Julia (1979) by Fred Zinneman, Coming Home (1979) by Hal Ashby.Jane Fonda credits her father’s choice of socially responsible films for her political activism: “My father didn't talk much, but he made movies like Grapes of Wrath, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Oxbow Incident and Twelve Angry Men, which obviously I saw when I was very young, and that got into my DNA.” In 1981 she produced a film where she starred with her father and Katherine Hepburn, On Golden Pond directed by Mark Rydell. “Katharine Hepburn had a huge impact on me, she was a real character but she really went out of her way to teach me lessons, so I learned a lot from her more than anybody.”In 1991, Fonda says, “I was so unhappy acting that I left the business for 15 years, from the age of 49 to 65 to live my life. Then I thought I could do this again with more joy, so I came back, and I've been blessed to be able to recreate a career between 65 and 78. I have worked very hard on myself as a human being and it's made it possible for me to be creative again.”Jane Fonda stars with Lily Tomlin in the Netflix comedy Gracie and Frankie.For more into, please read Jane Fonda’s classic profile – CLICK HERE!Elisa Leonelli