Culture

Jane Fonda Slams Hollywood for Being Sexist

Jane Fonda arrives for an interview at the Italian State RAI TV show "Che Tempo che Fa", in Milan, Jan. 18, 2015.
Antonio Calanni/AP Photo

January 27, 2015, 3:38 PM

 -- Jane Fonda is a legend in more ways than one, but admits when she first started out in film, she "took the easy road for a while."

Fonda, 77, opened up about her beginnings in Hollywood, using solely her beauty on the screen and how she started in acting as just an object of desire.

"I would say that ended with 'Barbarella,'" she said of her 1968 film, according to the Huffington Post. "I liked doing something that caused a certain generation of men to have their first erections. But then I became an activist."

Fonda and dear friend Lily Tomlin spoke yesterday at a Sundance lunch hosted by Women In Film. The two icons expanded on their current feelings of sexism in the landscape of modern-day Hollywood.

Read: Jane Fonda Calls Her Vietnam Photo 'A Huge, Huge Mistake'

Fonda continued to regale the audience of her past, with the two-time Oscar winner adding, "I would do it really differently if I had to do it over. Relationships are important. You don't have to sleep with them, but you have to be friends. I made a bunch of movies that didn't work."

Then, Fonda and Tomlin said the current model is still not equal and that access to funding for women is still a struggle in Hollywood.

"We should have a women's bank that funds women's projects,” Tomlin, 75, said.

Fonda added, "We all know what we have to do. We have to not be quiet about it, we have to keep talking about it, we have to shame the studios for being so gender-biased ... Media is the face that the United States gives to the world. And if the women's part of our country isn't part of that face, then they're not getting the whole picture."

She continued, "We have to show that women who make movies make money. We have to prove that we can be commercial."

The Guardian adds that Fonda addressed the inequality, including how it pertains to female execs and directors.

"The studios are run by men and they have the bottom line to meet and they give jobs to people like them,” she said. “We have to fight real hard to get women in positions of power and remember there are no set rules. Kathryn Bigelow made a guys’ film [The Hurt Locker], while her ex-husband James Cameron made a feminist film in Avatar.”

Tomlin and Fonda were also at Sundance, promoting their new Netflix series, "Grace and Frankie," that brings these two longtime collaborators back together and will be available to stream on May 8.