“I became an actress because I didn’t know what else to do! I was fired as a secretary; [acting coach] Lee Strasberg told me I was talented; and I had to earn a living,” she told Harvard Business Review in 2018. “That was the way I thought about it: It was a job.” The daughter of Henry Fonda grew up in California among other entertainment industry kids, but it only motivated her to work even harder. “When I became an actress, the fact that my father was a movie star was an advantage—no question—because people paid more attention to me than they would have if I were just another actress. Also, internally, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t getting parts because I was Henry Fonda’s daughter, so I worked harder,” she insisted. “Instead of taking one class a week, I would take four, so no one could say I was a dilettante. But then because of roles I’d had, I was put into a slot: nice girl next door. When I had the chance to go to France to make a movie with René Clément and get away from the shadow of my father, I jumped at it.” We’re all the better for it. Fonda became and remains an iconic, ageless fixture in entertainment, fitness, activism and beyond. Find out Jane Fonda’s net worth and all the hard work and glass ceilings she shattered in order to get there.
Jane Fonda is worth more than money can buy
If we’re being honest, Fonda is a priceless national treasure. But if it’s numbers you want, Jane Fonda’s net worth is estimated to be $200 million. “I wake up every morning, grateful that I’m where I am and that I have the resources that I do,” she recently told Parade.com. “I have a roof over my head. I’m not worried about food. So I’m just trying to do as much as I can from a base of privilege and feel a lot of gratitude.”
Jane Fonda wasn’t always paid fairly, but her movies made money
Fonda’s film salaries haven’t been widely reported, but she is selective with her work, and for a long time, wasn’t even paid fairly. “I wasn’t paid as much as my male costars,” she told Harvard Business Review in 2018. “I felt very judged by how I looked, and it made me extremely uncomfortable for a long time. We’re talking about the late 1950s and early 1960s, and at that time objectification and sexism were all around you in the movie business. There wasn’t a sense that you could do anything about it. It was just life. There were directors who tried to have sex with me before they would give me a job, but I would just laugh. It wasn’t until later, with the rise of the women’s movement in America, that this began to change.” Fonda admitted that in the beginning of her career, she was just happy to get any offers at all, and she was reluctant to really take any sort of stand for herself early on. “It took me 60 years to realize that ’no’ is a complete sentence. But for a long time, I had no agency, no volition; if someone offered me a role, I took it,” she said. “I wasn’t very happy in my career because of that.” That said, Fonda’s work has remained steady, and her box office has too: With the exception of a long break from 1989 to 2005, she’s worked consistently on the big screen, and she’s been pretty lucrative.
Julia (1977) made $21 million on a $7.8 million budget.Coming Home (1978) raked in $33 million on a $3 million budget.The China Syndrome (1979) brought in $52 million on a $6 million budget.The Electric Horseman (1979) made $62 million on a $12 million budget.One of her most famous films, 9 to 5, alongside costar Lily Tomlin, made $103 million on a $10 million budget, making it one of the highest-grossing movies ever at the time of its release in 1980.Her comeback vehicle, Monster In Law (alongside Jennifer Lopez and Michael Vartan) made a whopping $155 million on a $43 million budget in 2005.Fonda played Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013), which made $177 million on a $30 million budget.Book Club (2018) was one for the books indeed, making a straight-up sexy $104 million on a $10 million budget.
Don’t worry, Jane Fonda isn’t paid less than the men on Grace and Frankie
Fonda’s specific salary for Grace and Frankiehasn’t been reported, but there was a misunderstanding about it. Fonda and Tomlin made a joke that the male players in the Netflix series, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, made more money than they did for the show. While that would certainly lead to outrage if true, the leading ladies later clarified that it was a joke that went over the heads of many. They clarified in a statement (via The Wrap), “This just reminds us to be mindful of how things come across in interviews. We appreciate everyone’s support and the attention to this issue, but the structure of Grace and Frankie is fair, and we couldn’t be happier to work with Skydance, Netflix and the great cast of this show.”
Jane Fonda sold a lot of workout videos
Of course Fonda was a movie star, but more people may have watched her workouts than her acting work. Fonda learned the basics of her infamous aerobics from trainer Leni Cazden and teamed up with home video entrepreneur Stuart Karl, whose wife loved Fonda’s workout book. The Karls convinced Fonda to make her first workout video. It was so successful that she made 24 more, including two released in 2010. Fonda wrote in her blog that all the proceeds from her first workout video went to The Campaign For Economic Democracy (CED), a statewide nonprofit in California that she and her then-husband, Tom Hayden, launched in the 1970s. “It blows my mind how many millions of people have embraced fitness as an overall lifestyle choice,” she wrote. “If only we can come up with more ways to involve the millions of others who have yet to discover the benefits and, yes, the joys of working out (or even going for a regular fast walk, or climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator, or biking instead of driving.”
Jane Fonda and Ted Turner’s divorce settlement
When Fonda divorced her third husband, Ted Turner, in 2001, she got a significant settlement from the media mogul: Differingreportsclaim that she pocketed anywhere between $40 million and $100 million in the split in the form of cash and stocks.
But some of Jane Fonda’s most valuable work is her activism
“When I was about 33—and very much an activist—I decided I was going to leave the business. I told a friend, Ken Cockrel, a black lawyer in Detroit, where I was learning to organize with the United Auto Workers, ‘I think I’m going to quit Hollywood. I don’t like the parts I’m being offered, and I want to become a full-time organizer,’” she recalled to Harvard Business Review. “He said, ‘Don’t! Stop right there! The movement has plenty of organizers but no movie stars. You have to keep acting and to pay more attention to your career; the movement needs you to do that.’ That’s when I decided to start making my own movies—the first was Coming Home—and really began to find joy in my work.” Being a mom partially inspired Fonda to pursue causes that were important to her as well, including protesting the Vietnam War. “There was a lot going on in the world and I was pregnant, which makes a woman like a sponge, very open to what’s going on around her. It was around that time that I began to realize that I wanted to change my life and participate in trying to end the war,” she said. “I lived in France, I was married to Roger Vadim, I had a young daughter, and I left it all and went to America to become an activist.” Next, find out everything we know about Grace & Frankie’s 7th and final season!
