A series of images that at first seem incompatible within a single lifetime appear over Jane Fonda’s face and body: the arrival of Henry Fonda’s daughter’s pretty face on American screens at the end of the 1950s gives way to the sexbomb from Barbarella, quickly replaced by the left-wing activist who, taking scissors to her hair and bra, reveals a political firebrand and a feminist activist to the world at large. Just a few years later, in her 40s, she devotes herself to a new cult: that of fitness. The image of Fonda in her leotard then conclusively replaces that of ‘Hanoi Jane’ smiling on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun and of the double Oscar-winning actress in the collective subconscious. Her lengthy absence from the screen (1990-2005) establishes for posterity the image of an active and dynamic woman who turned the fight against aging into an aerobic routine. Her return to the big and small screen since 2005 changes things a little: at 70, then 80, Jane Fonda fully embraces her role as a mature woman along with all her wrinkles. We could leave things at that, surprised by these successive metamorphoses, and see only the superficial contradictions. This would undoubtedly mean missing out on a coherence and integrity that permeates both Fonda’s life and her career. Above all, it would mean failing to consider the way in which she has resonated with her own country, its history, its ambitions and its ambiguities. For this is the most fascinating thing about Fonda: the way in which she embodies America, to embrace or otherwise to reject its mythology, to grasp its different aspects, to be one of its most emblematic icons and to reveal its many strengths as well as its weaknesses. For Fonda, life is a quest for balance between personal struggles and collective ones, between self-assertion and progress for all, between pragmatism and idealism. A typically American phenomenon.