Jane Fonda's third act

(CBS News) Jane Fonda has played many roles both on- and off-screen. Now, at an age when plenty of people are slowing down, she talks as if she's just getting started. Lee Cowan visited her Hollywood Hills home for this Sunday Profile:

Jane Fonda's view of life from high above Hollywood is pretty good these days.

The fan mail never stops, and no wonder . . . Jane Fonda hasn't stopped, either.

At 74 she can still rock the red carpet. In Cannes last month, she stole the show - something that surprises even herself.

"Listen, I didn't think I'd live past 30. I mean, it's all a surprise to me," she said.

She's busier than ever, with movies and TV series in the works, including the upcoming HBO drama, "The Newsroom," where she'll play a hard-nosed network executive.

What Fonda calls her Third and Final Act is turning out to be a busy one.

"All of us - you know, probably you, too - were brought up with this view of life like an arc," she told Cowan. "You're born, you peak at midlife, then you decline into decrepitude. You know, it's a downward slope. You're 'over the hill.' And I realized, yeah, I'm over the hill, but look at all these other hills - no one told me there were gonna be all these hills!

"And I can climb them!"

Her latest movie opens this week - a role that, to some, may not seem like too much of a stretch. Her character - an aging, pot-smoking, one-time flower child - tries to help her up-tight lawyer daughter move on after a divorce.

"I'm so tired of movies that don't make me feel good. And it's a feel-good movie!" Fonda said.

It's fitting perhaps that the film's title is "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding" - because that's a pretty apt description of Jane Fonda's long and varied life.

From her earliest days in the public eye, she seemed to exude confidence. How else do you pull off the role of a voluptuous space traveler in "Barbarella," a cult classic that she says her first husband, French director Roger Vadim, talked her into.

"All that Barbarella hair was actually mine," she said. "That ain't no wig!"

It hardly held her back. She went on to win two Academy Awards - she was nominated for five others - but Fonda said she rarely felt she was ever good enough.

"I didn't think I could say no to anything," she said. "Because I was always just so astonished that anyone asked me to do anything."

Her portrayal of a prostitute in "Klute" earned Fonda her first Oscar. But she was so convinced she couldn't pull it off, she told the director to give the part to someone else.

"I said to Alan Pakula, 'I've been hanging out with hookers for ten days. I've been to their after-hours clubs, I've been with them when they were with their Johns, and not once did any of those guys try to solicit me. I can't do this. I'm clearly not the type. Hire Faye Dunaway.' And he just burst out laughing and kicked me out of the room."

Her self confidence issues, she says, started early.

Her mother, New York socialite Frances Brokaw, committed suicide when Jane was only 12.

"Parents are supposed to reflect their children back to them with eyes of love," Fonda said. "My mother had duct tape over her eyes because of mental illness."

And being the daughter of legendary screen actor Henry Fonda wasn't easy, either. The two had a famously strained relationship.

"Dad didn't know how to express emotions. It was a certain generation that you just didn't do that."

When the two appeared together in "On Golden Pond," it was like a therapy session in front of the cameras.

She said there were things she was able to say to Fonda as a character that she wasn't able to as a daughter. "It was very hard for me to do that. It was hard," she told Cowan. "When I said, 'I want to be your friend,' I reached out and I touched his arm. And I don't know if you can see it on the screen, it's so slight. But what I saw happen, condensed into a nanosecond, I saw surprise, I saw anger, I saw tears. And then he ducks his head like that. God forbid he should show emotion."

Katharine Hepburn, who starred opposite Henry Fonda, was just off-camera watching it all unfold.

"I looked up and Hepburn was hiding in the bushes. And she raised her fists to me - 'You can do it. You can do it, Jane.' And she willed me into the scene, God bless her!"

By that time, of course, Fonda had already made more than 30 films. But she was known for far more than just being an actress.

She remains, to this day, one of the more controversial faces of the protest movement against the Vietnam War.

Her trip to Hanoi in 1972 still sparks outrage among some veterans, largely for her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, smiling and laughing.

"I made a terrible mistake, unwittingly sitting on that gun," Fonda said. "it was a terrible thing. Because it belied who I am and what I stood for, and the fact that I had been working with soldiers for years before then.

"The appearance was that I was against my country and my soldiers and, you know, I will go to my grave - that is a regret I will never get over."

Her vocal opposition to the war led to interest in other social issues - and a new husband, activist Tom Hayden. Together, the two traveled the country promoting everything from solar power to environmental protection. But behind the scenes, she was engaged in another battle: bulimia.

Fonda said she had struggled with eating issues from age 15, off and on, to about age 45. She hid it from everyone - even her husbands -- until she started working out.

And we all know what that became.

"Up until then, I was like a dry drunk, you know?" she said. "I wasn't engaging in my addiction, but I wasn't healed, either, and the workout helped me heal. Because I discovered another way to manage my body issues."

She said when she first started making workout videos she had "not a clue" that they were groundbreaking. "I was very resistant to it in the beginning," she said. "I thought, 'I'm an actor! I don't want to make an exercise video. It's gonna hurt my career.'"

It didn't, of course. The "Workout" remains one of the bestselling home videos of all time.

But it still wasn't enough to boost her self-image - and acting began to fade from the picture.

"I have a really hard time becoming another character when I'm feeling really, really, really bad about myself," she said. "I mean literally, when I thought about the future, I saw nothing but gray. I thought there's no future. I just - I can't go in front of the camera again."

And she didn't - for 15 years.

Which was just fine with her third husband, Ted Turner. She again molded herself to the man she married, and became a philanthropist on a billionaire's arm.

She didn't miss movies, she says . . . not at first. But then, while writing her memoir, the itch came back.

"Monster in Law" marked her over-the-top return. Critics hated it, but no matter: Fonda loved it. She was re-energized.

"Were you a little rusty, or was it like riding a bike?" Cowan asked.

"No! It's like riding a bike, totally!"

Soon she was back to writing, too. She finished "Prime Time" last year, and it's pure Fonda - a straight-talking how-to-age manual detailing everything from planning a will to having sex after 70.

"I wanted to write a book where older people would say Nobody's ever said this before!" she laughed.

She's even got a new series of workout DVDs designed for people like her, who can't quite do what they used to.

Is she proof that exercise works? "Well, you know they'll say, 'Oh I guess it works.' But you know, I've made no secret of the fact that I've had some plastic surgery. And I have good genes."

She's a mother, now a grandmother, and has found love again she says, this time with music producer Richard Perry.

She may have had more acts that a variety show - and yet, it's this last act she says, that's her favorite.

"I think with a lot of intention, and courage, and stick -to-it-ive-ness, I have managed to overcome my weaknesses and to play on my strengths and to become a happy, peaceful, present person," she said.

For more info:

• janefonda.com
• "Prime Time: Love, Health, Sex, Fitness, Friendship, Spirit - Making the Most of All of Your Life" by Jane Fonda (Random House)
• "The Newsroom" (HBO)
• "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding" (IFC Films)