Jane Fonda knows her body and isn't afraid to talk about it.
The model-turned-fitness guru-turned actress covers W magazine's June/July issue, officially making her the oldest cover star in the publication's history. Even though she might be 77 years old that doesn't mean she doesn't still got it.
"I think it's a hoot that, at my age, people are calling me a fashion icon," she tells the magazine. But when she gets spotted wearing a jaw-dropping Balmain jumpsuit on the red carpet of this year's Grammy Awards, it's hard to call her anything but an icon. She credits her wardrobe to be aware of what works and doesn't work for her body.
"I suppose I've always known what I like on my body," she explains. "I took one look at that Balmain jumpsuit, and I said, 'That's it!' I'm best when I'm wearing something structured, with no frills or bows. Something that will show my waist and bum, because I've always had a good bum."
She's more hesitant, however, to show off her arms. "Now these only come out during candlelight on a very dark evening," she says. "I'm older now, and I have to be more self-conscious. When you're young, you can get away with more. I always thought that being self-conscious was a negative. But now I feel differently."
Despite wearing some of fashion's greatest names now, her view of fashion hasn't always been positive. "Truthfully, my relationship to fashion has always been strained," she says. "When I was starting out as an actress in New York, I worked as a model because I needed to pay for acting classes. But I didn't have what it took to be a model. I hated all the emphasis on how I looked, and I never paid much attention to clothes."
But after three marriages and multiple career highs, Fonda admits that she wanted to start a new chapter in her career, given her older age. She realized that she could be the face of a new movement in Hollywood. "I realized I didn't have a lot of time left, and I wanted to pay more attention," Fonda explains. "I had a vision: I wanted to give a cultural face to older women."
As a "cultural face" to older woman, Fonda has to come clean about her experience with plastic surgery. "I did have plastic surgery. I'm not proud of the fact that I've had it," she confesses. "But I grew up so defined by my looks. I was taught to think that if I wanted to be loved, I had to be thin and pretty. That leads to a lot of trouble."
Now starring in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, which follows two women as they move on after their husbands come out as gay, Fonda believes that the "resilience" the characters show in the series mirrors what she has had to do in her career and life.
"It's a very mysterious thing. When I was first starting out, I'd go to auditions, and I knew so many of the gals. Half of them were far more beautiful than me, and the other half were far more talented, but none of those women made it," she muses. "I'd wonder, Why did it happen for me and not them? Now I think it has to do with that core resilience."
W's June/July issue hits newsstands June 2.