Jane Fonda's 'Life So Far'

When it comes to adjectives, two-time Academy Award-winning actress would be just fine for some, but not Jane Fonda. She also can be accurately described as activist, producer, workout guru, philanthropist, entrepreneur and mother.

She chronicles her accomplishments, as well as her personal struggles, in her new memoir, "My Life So Far," and she visited The Early Show to talk about it.

In telling her life story, Fonda tells co-anchor Hannah Storm she hopes people take away from it that "it's important for women to own their strength and their voice, and it's important for men to own their hearts."

She dedicates the book to her mom, socialite Frances Seymour, who committed suicide when Fonda was only 12.

It reads: "Here's to you, Frances Ford Seymour, my mother - you did the best you could. You gave me life, you gave me wounds; you also gave me part of what I needed to grow stronger at the broken place."

CLICK HERE to read an excerpt from Chapter One.

"I knew that to heal, I had to come to terms with her and try to understand her," Fonda says. "It's hard, because I didn't really know her that well and I was so young, and most of the people who knew her died, so I jumped in by dedicating the book to her, thinking how am I going to do this.

"And then like miracles, people began to come into my life that had known her. And then I got her medical records. Lawyers helped me get her medical records from the institution where she had been. And there was her own personal history that she had written herself. And in it, I discovered that she had been sexually abused as a girl. And the minute I knew that, I knew everything. It all became clear and I was able to forgive her and to understand her and, hence, myself. It was a real blessing."

As she was about to turn 60, Fonda asked her daughter to help her put together a video of her life. And Vanessa laughed and said, "Why don't you just get a chameleon and let it crawl across the screen," of which Fonda writes "I couldn't help but feel that maybe it was true- maybe I simply become whatever the man I am wants me to be: 'sex kitten,' 'controversial activist,' 'ladylike wife on the arm of controversial mogul."' - Referring to Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden and Ted Turner.

"That's the rap on me," Fonda tells Storm. "I've known that all along. One of the things I discovered in researching my life to prepare myself for my third act when I turned 60 was that it was true, but not entirely true, that I was always on a path of self-discovery -- of different aspects of self-discovery when I would meet a remarkable man who would bring me further down that path, and so I was at least co-captain of my own ship."

The relationship with her father was a bit of an enigma. She says Henry Fonda was emotionally distant. And through this relationship she developed what she calls a "disease to please."

"I learned that expression from Oprah," Fonda says. "Girls and boys, too, but it's mostly a disease of girls. When you're made to feel that you're not good enough and that you have to be perfect in order to be loved, you develop the disease to please. You know, you'll do anything to please. It's usually to please a man. I didn't have the problem when I was with my women friends. And it affected me all my life and my marriages and my dad was a wonderful man. Just like Norman in 'On Golden Pond.'"

In 1981, she was able to produce and costar with her father in that film, which served two purposes for her. The first was to bring the two of them closer, as happened with the father and daughter in the film. Secondly, Fonda hoped that he would finally win an Oscar, which had never won.

Asked what was the experience of filming that movie together like, Fonda says it was different for her than for him.

She explains, "In the movie, Chelsea, the character that I played, says to her mother, Katharine Hepburn, 'You know, in real life I'm a can-do person. I've got my own business. And yet I come here and when I'm with him, I'm just a little fat girl.' That said it all. You know? When I was with my dad, I was just a little fat girl, even though I produced the movie; I won two Academy Awards; I was a mother, etcetera. And to be able to say the lines that so closely paralleled what I wanted to say to him in life was an amazing experience that touched me and transformed me on a deep level.

"I'm not sure that it did him. He didn't talk and communicate, so I don't know the affect it had on him. But for him to have won the Academy Award five months before he died was -- I doesn't get any better for a child. Does it?"

Fonda says it was the happiest day of her life. "Oh, God," she says. "And of course, afterwards with Bridget Fonda and my family, and my husband and children, we brought it to him because he was too sick to go. And I gave it to him and I said, 'How do you feel, dad?' And he said, 'I'm so happy for Kate.'"

Hepburn had won an Oscar, too. Fonda includes a chapter about her. At first, Hepburn gave Fonda a hard time and told her she hated her, but eventually she helped Fonda when she most needed it.

Fonda says, "It's like God saying you were a bad person. It was hard. She wanted to put me in my place, and if she felt I wasn't, she would do it. She stirred up a lot of stuff. She made me feel guilty for having children. But also during the difficult times during the filming of the movie, she was always there for me."

A large part of the book, over 150 pages, consists of Fonda detailing and explaining her stand against the Vietnam war, including what she has called the "two minute lapse of sanity," when she was photographed sitting at a North Vietnam antiaircraft gun site. That image of "Hanoi Jane" is still strong and emotional for many people.

"And for me as well. It was for me, too," Fonda says. "Because I had spent two years helping soldiers, working with active duty -- all branches of the military. And to have had a lapse of judgment that made me look like I was against the soldiers was a terrible thing. Terrible thing. And I'm so sorry."

Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King," she received a lot of e-mails. One of them was from a veteran who said, "I would have given my life to protect her right to have her say. But I will never forgive her."

Asked what it is like for her knowing that there are people who will never forgive her for that, Fonda says, "It hurts. It hurts a lot.

"I know that it's misdirected hostility. I'm not the one that sent the men there. It wasn't my war. I came in to anti-war activism seven years into the war. I went to Vietnam because we were being lied to by our government and men were dying because of it. I didn't cause that to happen. I tried to end it. But I understand where the anger comes from."

And she adds that the image at the North Vietnam antiaircraft gun site did not reflect what was in her heart. "It really hurts me and I'm sorry that it hurt the men," Fonda says.