The year is 1964. Jane Fonda, 27, has fled her father, Henry Fonda, and the United States. She has just finished shooting her first French film, Felines, alongside by Alain Delon and did, that year, meeting Roger Vadim36 years old, on the set of the Franco-Italian film Round. It was then the beginning of a tumultuous love story which would last nine years between the French director and the American actress.
After Brigitte Bardot or Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda becomes the new muse by Roger Vadim. In 1966, the director cast the star in his film The Curee, adapted from Émile Zola’s book of the same name. On screen, he shatters the image of the wise American actress and then reveals a hotter version of the star, shaped in his image. Between Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim, everything happens very quickly. They get married a first time in Las Vegas on August 14, 1965, but they forgot to have their union validated by the French Consul. The couple therefore renewed their vows on May 18, 1967 in France. A little over a year later, the actress and director welcome their first child togethera little girl named Vanessa.
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Roger Vadim: an authoritarian and unfaithful husband
Very quickly, the relationship between Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda becomes toxic. The activist was very in love with her husband at the time and accepts the latter’s infidelities out of love. This goes even further, since for fear of losing him, she agrees to share erotic games with him, and goes so far as to choose the women who will share the marital bed. “One night Vadim brought another woman into my bed. I went there… I like competition. It was the 60s (…) I know one thing: it really hurt me… It reinforced my feeling that I wasn’t good enough. I felt like if I said no, he would abandon me, and I couldn’t imagine myself without him.“she confided in 2005 to CBS.
Jane Fonda has a hard time refusing anything to the man who shares her life. Roger Vadim is aware of this and takes advantage of this “power” to get everything he wants from her. In 1967, when she, like Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, refused the offer of Italian producer Dino De Laurentis to participate in his adaptation of the futuristic comic strip by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella, she eventually reversed her decision after Roger Vadim explicitly asked her to do so. He also took the opportunity to become director of the project. Jane Fonda is once again shaped by her husband who makes her a true sex symbol. However, this filming was very trying for the star whose image did not fit at all with the character. Guest on the set of C to you, on May 3, 2021, she confided that she had to drink alcohol to relax before certain scenes: “It was that I had to be naked, I was so modest, I was so scared, that I actually had to drink vodka to relax.”
The Emancipation of Jane Fonda
Weakened and humiliated by her relationship with Roger Vadim, Jane Fonda no longer recognizes herself. During the events of May 1968, she gradually detaches herself from her husband’s grip and rediscovers himself. Then began her political engagement and her work as an activist. The actress and the director finally divorced in 1973. Jane Fonda left France to reach the United States. She will see her ex-husband again on certain occasions for their daughter.
The French director died on February 11, 2000. At his funeral, Jane Fonda was present, as were Brigitte Bardot, Anette Stroyberg as well as his last two wives, Catherine Schneider and Marie-Christine Barrault. In 2005, during an interview with Catherine Ceylac in Tea or coffeethe star of the Netflix series Grace and Frankie spoke about her marriage to the director and revealed why she was present at his funeral: “Because I loved him, I miss him a lot. I spent very happy and passionate years with Vadim. I think of him often.”Jane Fonda even concluded that it “You have to know how to forgive others and yourself.”.
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