By Harry Haun
07 Mar 2009

Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda was born Dec. 21, 1937 — the night that "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" premiered — and was named after a distant relative: the third Mrs. Henry VIII. She first set foot on a stage supporting her father, Henry, in a charity performance of The Country Girl at the Omaha Community Theatre. "Dad told me I was talented," she recalls. "I did it as a lark. I had no intention of being an actress."

Nevertheless, the lark took wing on Broadway in 1960 in There Was a Little Girl, winning a Tony nomination as well as a Theatre World Award. She was directed by a friend of the family, Joshua Logan, who put her in movies (via "Tall Story").

She won two Oscars (for "Klute" and "Coming Home") out of seven nominations — and an Emmy for "The Dollmaker," playing an uprooted rustic and echoing her father's famous Tom Joad. Nine of her movies have come from plays (among them: "Period of Adjustment," "Sunday in New York," "Any Wednesday," "Barefoot in the Park," "A Doll's House," "California Suite"), and one is coming to Broadway this season as a musical ("9 to 5"). She has even played a playwright on one distinguished occasion (Lillian Hellman in "Julia"), but "the only movie I was conscious was a play, because I purchased it for my father, was 'On Golden Pond.' I produced that and saw it as a play." It won her dad his overdue Oscar, Katharine Hepburn an unprecedented fourth Oscar and herself her only nomination as a [very] supporting actress.

"Dad's first love was theatre," Fonda says. "He did Mister Roberts and didn't miss a performance in four years. At a time when it was unusual for Hollywood stars to keep coming back to theatre, my dad did. He is very much with me now. I'm happy to be in this community. I was too young before. I didn't realize what it was. Having been so many other places and circling back now, it seems like the first time."