Actress Jane Fonda is out of touch with the modern rules of dating, because she never had to go looking for love.
The Barbarella star, 80, has been single since splitting from her boyfriend of eight years, Richard Perry, at the start of 2017, but she doubts there will be more romance in her future – unless her suitors actively seek her out.
“I’ve had a good run,” she smiled of her past relationships, including failed marriages to filmmaker Roger Vadim, political activist Tom Hayden, and media mogul Ted Turner.
Fonda admits each of her exes pursued her for romance, so she didn’t have to work to land a date when she was younger, and it helped that she was famous.
“Well, Ted read in the paper that I was getting a divorce from my second husband and he called me up,” she shared. “The guy that I was divorcing (Hayden), when I first met him, he knew I was gonna be at (an anti-Vietnam War) rally, and he came looking for me. Same with my first (husband). That’s the thing: it’s good when you’re famous ’cause people come looking for you!”
And while Jane is content with the love she’s experienced in her life, there will always be the one who got away – Robert Redford.
The two acting legends have worked together in four movies, and during the press tour for their 2017 release Our Souls at Night, Jane revealed she had actually fallen head over heels for Robert when they shot their first three projects together back in the 1960s and ’70s.
“I was always in love with him,” Jane said of co-starring with him in The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, and The Electric Horseman. “I fell in love every time.”
Her comments came as a surprise to Robert, as he was unaware their chemistry onscreen was spilling over into real life for the actress.
“I didn’t know she was (in love) with me,” he told the Daily Telegraph, although he acknowledged they have always been “very close”, and their bond on camera actually inspired him to suggest Fonda for the role of his lover Addie in Our Souls At Night, which he produced.
“There was just a chemistry we had as human beings that we could carry on to the screen that required no effort,” he mused. “And it’s been that way through all of our films.”