At 85,Jane Fondais feeling better than ever, but that wasn’t the case when she was younger.
“Being young is really hard. Don’t let anyone kid you,” Fonda says in this week’s PEOPLE cover story. “I wish when I was younger, someone had said to me, ‘Don’t give up. Keep going. It’ll get better.'”
Yu Tsai
The Oscar-winning star said she never aspired to be an actress when she was younger.
“Young me did not want to be an actor. I didn’t think I had talent. I didn’t think I was pretty enough. I had a lot of body dysmorphia,” she explains. “I was pretty lost as a young person.”
In 1982 Fonda started a fitness revolution when she releasedJane Fonda’s Workout, based on a class she took from an exercise instructor named Leni Cazden that helped her feel more control over her health after struggling with bulimia. The video sold more than 17 million copies.
“So many women said to me, ‘My whole attitude about myself changed,’ " says Fonda. “That meant the world to me.” Today she exercises three to four times a week with a trainer, goes on hikes and sticks to a healthy diet.
Fonda says one of the main reasons she’s happier today is that a lot of the questions she had when she was younger have now been answered.
“Who am I? What am I supposed to do in life? All of that has been answered. I don’t take anything for granted, and I’m just amazed that at my age I’m still working and have a lot of energy,” she says “It’s all a surprise to me.”
For more on Jane Fonda, pick up a copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands now
source: people.com
