Jane Fonda gave a powerful speech while accepting the Life Achievement Award at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Fonda, 87, took the stage at the Sunday, February 23, event, held at Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles, after being presented with the honor by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
“Wow. This means the world to me. I’m going to talk loud. Thank you SAG-AFTRA. And your enthusiasm makes this seem like a twilight of my life and more like a, ‘Go girl kick ass!’ Which is good because I’m not done,” the actress, who donned a custom Armani gown and Pomellato Jewelry, began her speech to roaring applause. “I have had a really weird career — totally, not as my agents there at that table will tell you, totally unstrategic. I retired for a few years and then I came back at 65, which is not usual, and then I made one of my most successful movies in my 80s and probably in my 90s I’ll be doing my own stunts in an action movie. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘It’s OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don’t miss the flower show’? I’m a late bloomer. This is the flower show.”
She continued, “I love acting. We get to open people’s minds to new ideas, take them beyond what they understand of the world and help them laugh when things are tough, like now. And for a woman like me, who grew up in the ‘40s and ‘50s when women weren’t supposed to have opinions and get angry, acting gave me a chance to play angry women with opinions — which you know is a bit of a stretch for me. I’m a big believer in unions. They have our backs, they bring us into community and they give us power. Community means power. And this is really important right now when worker’s power is being attacked and community is being weakened. But SAG-AFTRA is different from most other unions because us, the workers, the actors, we don’t manufacture anything tangible. What we create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls. We know why they do what they do, we know their joy and their pain.”
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Fonda then briefly was interrupted by an announcer over the loudspeakers, to which she replied, “And I can conjure up voices!”
She then concluded her speech by sharing more of what it means to have “empathy” as an actor, telling the crowd, “We have to drill deep, we have to know for example if a young woman is cutting, or she’s a sex worker, there’s a good chance that as a young girl she was sexual abused or incested. … And I’m sure many of you guys have played bullies and misogynists and you can pretty much know that, probably, that their father bullied them and called them weak, called them losers or pussies. And while you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing, right? … Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
Earlier this month, Fonda released a statement expressing her gratitude about being recognized for the prestigious award.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to be this year’s recipient of the SAG Life Achievement Award,” the 9 to 5 star said in response to the announcement.”SAG-AFTRA works tirelessly to protect the working actor and to ensure that union members are being treated equitably in all areas, and I am proud to be a member as we continue to work to protect generations of performers to come.”
SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) president Fran Drescher also addressed the decision to honor Fonda, labeling her a pioneer of the entertainment industry.
“Jane Fonda is a trailblazer and an extraordinary talent — a dynamic force who has shaped the landscape of entertainment, advocacy and culture with unwavering passion,” Drescher shared in a statement. “We honor Jane not only for her artistic brilliance but for the profound legacy of activism and empowerment she has created.”
Fonda’s career has spanned over six decades, making the SAG honor well-deserved and adding to her long list of accolades that includes two Oscars, an Emmy, seven Golden Globes and two BAFTA Awards. Her talents have spanned various mediums, including TV (HBO’s The Newsroom and Netflix’s Grace and Frankie) and film (1968’s Barbarella, 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, 1978’s Coming Home and 1980’s 9 to 5).
Beyond her artistic achievements, Fonda has been a vocal advocate for social causes such as gender equality, environmental justice and civil rights since the 1960s, In 1984, she cofounded the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee and in 2005 established the Women’s Media Center. She later launched the Jane Fonda Climate PAC in 2022 to combat the climate crisis and has been arrested multiple times in the name of peaceful protest and social justice.
In 2022, she celebrated her 85th birthday by raising $1 million for her nonprofit, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential, which is focused on teen pregnancy and adolescent health.
During an April 2018 interview with the Harvard Business Review, Fonda opened up about her decision to pursue acting and shared how motherhood pivoted her career into the nonprofit sector. (The actress welcomed daughter Vanessa with first husband Roger Vadim and son Troy with ex-husband Tom Hayden. The exes also share daughter Mary Luana Williams, whom they adopted in the 1980s.)
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“I became an actress because I didn’t know what else to do! I was fired as a secretary; Lee Strasberg [the acting coach] told me I was talented; and I had to earn a living,” she explained. “That was the way I thought about it: It was a job. The activism wasn’t until I was 30. There was a lot going on in the world and I was pregnant, which makes a woman like a sponge, very open to what’s going on around her. It was around that time that I began to realize that I wanted to change my life and participate in trying to end the war. I lived in France, I was married to Roger Vadim, I had a young daughter, and I left it all and went to America to become an activist.”
