Actress Jane Fonda speaks at a press conference for indigenous rights, in Edmonton Alta, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)
Jane Fonda is opening up for the first time about being a victim of rape.
“I’ve been raped, I’ve been sexually abused as a child and I’ve been fired because I wouldn’t sleep with my boss and I always thought it was my fault; that I didn’t do or say the right thing,” she said in an interview with Net-a-Porter’s The Edit.
She added, in the interview conducted by actress and activist Brie Larson, “I know young girls who’ve been raped and didn’t even know it was rape. They think, ‘It must have been because I said “no” the wrong way.’ One of the great things the women’s movement has done is to make us realize that [rape and abuse is] not our fault. We were violated and it’s not right.”
In 2014, the 79-year-old two-time Academy Award winner revealed that her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, was sexually abused as a child before committing suicide at 42.
“The minute that I read that, everything fell into place,” Fonda said at an event for the Rape Treatment Center. “I knew why the promiscuity, the endless plastic surgery, the guilt, the inability to love or be intimate, and I was able to forgive her and forgive myself.” She vowed to support the center for the rest of her life.
The “Grace and Frankie” actress also admitted that throughout her career, she’d been taken advantage of and always had trouble saying “no” in Hollywood.
“It took me 60 years to learn how to say no,” she said. “If anyone offered me anything I would say yes. I took parts I wasn’t right for and I was taken advantage of. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. Now, I would say, ‘No. This is a piece of s–t. I don’t like the way you’re treating me,’ and leave. If only I had known then what I do now.”
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