Jane Fonda Opens Up About Her Life After Divorce 

The actress walked the red carpet for the premiere of her new film Book Club: The Next Chapter. She spoke with ET’s Rachel Smith about how she relates to her character in the film and what parallels exist between the character and her personal life.

Love and Learning

This is a sequel to 2018’s Book Club features four women embarking on a late-in-life journey to Italy that doesn’t go as planned. The film encourages viewers to reclaim their destinies and gain the courage to make decisions and follow their gut.

For Fonda, that moment arrived when she was around 62 years old and was single for the first time.

Fonda married Roger Vadim in 1965 and their divorce was finalized in 1973. Just days later, she married activist Tom Hayden. They separated in 1988 and their divorce was finalized in 1990.

In 1991, Fonda married Ted Turner, the media mogul and CNN founder. They stayed together for ten years before splitting up in 2001. Since then, Fonda has enjoyed the independence of being single.

ET spoke with Fonda just before her 80th birthday in 2017 about her single status. “This thing about not needing a man? I needed a man to define me until I was about 70.”

When asked what she’s learned about love since then, she answered “Nothing! I am not cut out for it!”

The Best Years

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The actress did an interview with PEOPLE for their cover story about how “life gets better with age.”

“There’s been tragedy and hard things in my life. But I’ve never succumbed to them. I’ve been resilient all my life,” she says.

The actress says it’s a “dream come true” to film alongside close friends  Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen.

“It’s everything I imagined women’s friendships can be. When I was younger, there was this assumption that women were kind of catty and four stars working together wouldn’t work because they’d be competing, and it’s just not true. We’re friends and we love working together and we help each other when we need to.”

Read More: Jane Fonda’s Husbands: A Look Into the Icon’s Love Life (rare.us)