THE JOURNEY OF JANE FONDA SHE'S AN OPEN BOOK ON LIFE, MARRIAGE AND HER RETURN TO MOVIES IN 'MONSTER- IN-LAW'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

No one makes comebacks like Jane Fonda.

For years Hollywood's high-profile queen of self-reinvention, Fonda had been laying low for the past 15 years after quitting the movie business and marrying her third husband, flamboyant media mogul Ted Turner.

But with her best-selling autobiography, ``My Life So Far,'' and her over-the-top turn in the comedy ``Monster-in-Law'' coming out within a month of each other, the 67-year-old Fonda is once again as ubiquitous a media figure as she ever was.

But Henry Fonda's daughter, the '60s sex kitten, Hanoi Jane and the video workout guru is, once again, different now.

She's happy for a change.

`I wrote the book because I have come to some understanding in my life and what the themes are, and I knew that if I wrote it honestly that it would help people,'' says Fonda, petite and perfectly trim despite having had to give up her legendary exercise regimen in preparation for upcoming hip replacement surgery. ``I liked the fact that just about the time the book was coming out I could do this movie that was funny, which is not what people associate me with, even though I've done a lot of comedies.

``It was like, for the last few months I've known that there was going to be this wall of public scrutiny coming toward me, and you just gird your loins, get ready and just sort of say, 'OK, one more day down. Check.' About mid-June, it will be over.''

Much of that scrutiny, as in the past, has been self-generated. Fonda's book reveals reams of personal information, a lot of which the always-upfront actress has not discussed publicly before.

We can read how she felt when, at age 12, she learned - from a report in a movie magazine - that her mentally unstable mother, Frances Seymour, had committed suicide. Her movie star father Henry's emotional distance is gone over in extensive detail, as are her own struggles with bulimia and lifelong urge to be as perfect as she could be.

Then there are the husbands she never felt she could please: French director Roger Vadim, who not only turned her into space vixen ``Barbarella'' on screen but invited prostitutes to share their marital bed; fellow political activist Tom Hayden, who left her for a younger woman; and impulsive Turner, who despite some straying of his own remains Fonda's favorite ex.

``He's the only person I know who's had to apologize more than I've had to,'' she says, laughing, about The Mouth From the South. Of course, she's referring to her own repeated mea culpas for the trip she took to Hanoi at the height of the Vietnam War, which culminated in the infamous photograph of Fonda sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.

But perhaps the most intriguing question Fonda is answering these days is why she just up and quit an acting career that won her two Academy Awards (for ``Klute'' and ``Coming Home''), finally enabled her to address some issues with Henry (``On Golden Pond'') and let her creatively express some of her beliefs (``The China Syndrome'').

``The last few films that I made, not because of the films but because of me, were agony,'' says Fonda, whose marriage to Hayden was collapsing at the time. ``I was an unhappy person. I was kind of in denial about it, and I was living, basically, in my head. You can't live in your head and be creative at the same time. I was just terrified to get up in the morning and go to work. And I just didn't want to be terrified anymore.''

There was no terror on the set of ``Monster-in-Law,'' though, a broad comedy in which Fonda plays the insanely disapproving mother of her son's fiancee, played by Jennifer Lopez.

``This was not a challenge,'' a laughing Fonda says about her character, Viola Fields, a Barbara Walters-type TV personality whose wild behavior the actress claims to have based on Turner's. ``This was a you-don't-have-to-think-too-much, you-just-get-up-and-go-to-work-and-have-a-Line is overdrawn good-time piece of cake. It's not hard.''

Not for her, maybe. But try telling that to the living legend's co-stars.

``You do get the butterflies when Jane Fonda walks in the room,'' Lopez admits. ``You can't help that, you know what I mean? Because you're used to seeing (her) huge on the big screen and all that kind of stuff.''

But despite her long absence from movie sets, Fonda proved the picture of old-school graciousness.

``Let me tell you what she first said when she saw her trailer,'' director Robert Luketic (``Legally Blonde'') says. ``When she left the business, trailers weren't what they are today. She came up to it and said, 'Wow! Who will I be sharing this trailer with?' I was like, 'Girl, are you on crack? That's all for you!'

``She comes from a time when all of this madness wasn't around in our business. Jane, in her way, set a tone for us. It was a tone of 'Let's respect each other, let's have fun, let's be professional.' ''

However emotionally devastated or politically radical she may have been, Fonda always seemed to maintain a strong professional focus. She says that, in the past, it was something of an act, albeit one she was always compelled to play.

``I grew up feeling that I wouldn't be loved unless I was perfect - and that I needed to be perfect,'' she says. ``And of course, nobody's perfect, so that makes you pretty anxious. People numb the anxiety in different ways - alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever - I filled that need with food addictions and the disease to please. That can cause you to betray yourself a lot, and that's how I spent a good part of my life. I was successful, financially independent, all kinds of good things. But I never was brave enough to really own myself. I've spent 15 years trying to heal.''

Part of that healing has involved a turn toward Christianity. But ever the political leftist, don't call her Born-Again Jane.

``I don't know what born-again even means,'' she says. ``I'm a feminist Christian. It's such a hard word to use these days because there's so much political baggage that comes with it. It's so associated with fundamentalism, but that's not what Christianity is to me.

``I was on a search for a spiritual home for some time,'' she reveals. ``And it's my culture. I really respect Buddhism and Islam, but if I'm gonna look for a spiritual home, it would be in Christianity.''

Jane has also found a temporal home in Turner's town, Atlanta, where she still lives with her daughter, Vanessa Vadim, and grandchildren. (Fonda's son with Hayden, Troy Garity, has followed her footsteps into acting).

``I live in Georgia because it's real,'' she says. ``It's not a sort of rarefied, elitist enclave. It forces me to slow down and pay attention in a different kind of way. It puts me closer to the heartland.

``I'm a social activist at heart, so I think I can be more effective there,'' adds Fonda, who pours much of her energy (and a good chunk of her ``MiL'' salary) into the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention these days. ``And my daughter is there, and my grandchildren are there, and Ted's grandchildren who call me Grandma. It's where I've put down roots, and you know, at some point you have to stop moving. That feels more home to me than here.''

If that sounds like a thinly veiled knock against her Hollywood upbringing, well, even a cursory reading of Fonda's book indicates she may not have forgiven her father to the extent she may think she has.

``My mother suffered from manic depression,'' she says. ``My father was remote. They were wonderful people, and they did the best they could, but they just didn't know how to be parents. It could have been a whole lot worse. I work with kids now that have had really bad childhoods. I did not have a bad childhood. But it was a childhood that did cause me to feel not good enough.''

As for the mistakes she's made over the course of her own, fully lived life, Fonda reckons, ``The important thing is to understand them and learn lessons from them.''

And she does feel like she's gotten past the big one, that disease to please. The real test of that, though, has yet to come.

``I'd love to fall in love again, but, you know, hasn't happened,'' she shrugs. ``You never know until you try, right? Everybody who used to know me and sees me now recognizes that I'm very different. But you're not really tested until you're in a relationship.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

Jane on Vietnam ... and Iraq

Many Americans define Jane Fonda by her vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam and infamous 1972 trip to Hanoi. But could her less-than-idyllic childhood, as depicted in ``My Life So Far,'' in some way have fueled the fervor with which she opposed the war, something many children of the '60s and '70s did, at least partially, in rebellion against their parents?

``No,'' Fonda insists. ``It was a bad war, men were dying, 55,000 Americans killed, millions of Indochinese. We were being lied to, it was eight years into the war, enough already. I went there to try to expose the lies and I made a terrible mistake that belied everything that I had been doing, working with soldiers and veterans.''

And she is still hated for it. Just last month, a Vietnam veteran spit tobacco juice on Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City.

``We've never come to terms with the war,'' she says philosophically. ``The wounds are still wide open, especially for the guys who fought there. I understand why they would be angry, and it's easier to have me as a lightning rod than to get angry at the men who sent them there. I have compassion for that.''

As for the current war against terrorism, Fonda exhibits a rare hint of reluctance to speak her mind.

But just a hint.

``I don't want it to become the headline, you know what I mean?'' she says. ``But there were other ways to do it besides invading Iraq. I think it's a huge mistake.''

- Bob Strauss

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fun with Jane

Fonda back in spotlight with `Monster-in-Law' comedy and best-selling book

(2) no caption (Jane Fonda)

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

(3) In ``Monster-in-Law,'' Fonda does everything she can to come between her son (Michael Vartan) and his fiancee (Jennifer Lopez).

Box:

Jane on Vietnam...and Iraq (see text)