• Jane Fonda opened up about aging, particularly how it feels after she battled cancer last year.
  • “I’m so blessed to be healthy enough to keep working,” she said.
  • She added that, at 86, she’s the happiest she’s ever been.

As a young actress, Jane Fonda didn’t expect to live past 30. So aging is something the Grace and Frankie star doesn’t take for granted, especially given that she recently entered cancer remission after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last year. Now, she’s getting candid about getting older.

“I need to pinch myself all the time,” she recently told People. “I’m so blessed to be healthy enough to keep working and lucky enough to keep being offered nice parts, and this is all a big surprise to me.”

As someone who grew up in a tumultuous family environment and has experienced her fair share of other medical hardships (including a mastectomy, hip replacement, and shoulder replacement, to name a few), Fonda has survived on resilience.

“There’s been tragedy and hard things in my life. But I’ve never succumbed to them,” she told People. And now, she’s “the happiest I’ve ever been,” she said.

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Fonda is currently promoting one of four movies she has out this year, Book Club: The Next Chapter, which she and the cast filmed in Italy. And she credits her health for keeping her energy and stamina up at work.

“I’m almost 86 and I feel about 80, you know. I mean your body does start to kind of give way, little by little in all kinds of big ways and little ways,” she explained. “And I’m in the middle of that, and I’m very aware of it.”

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Fonda continued: “When I say I feel 80, it doesn’t feel old. You know, my dad died 10 years younger than I am now, and he seemed so much older than I seem. And it’s because he was ill, he had heart disease. I don’t have diseases—I’ve had cancer, but that’s different. I’m basically a healthy person. And so that’s what makes me seem younger than my actual numerical age, is because I’m healthy. And I have good posture.”

And, ’80s exercise tapes or not, she stays moving, too. In fact, Book Club director Bill Holderman described Fonda as “a force” to People. On everyone’s day off in Rome, Fonda traversed the city before her cast and crew mates were even out of bed.

“She came back and said, ‘I just got 11,000 steps!’” Holderman recalled. “She’s a sponge for information. By the end of filming, Jane probably knew more about the gelato shops in Rome than the Romans.”

Book Club: The Next Chapter hits theaters May 12.

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Kayla Blanton

Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.