The China Syndrome
We are launching a recurring program dedicated to highlighting an actor or actress for a month. Jane Fonda combines star power with a comforting familiarity that has been with us for decades, both on and off screen, as she continues to be a leading activist to this day. Born into a family of actors, she has not rested on her laurels. Instead, she built a career all her own, demonstrating a unique talent that has effortlessly spanned different eras and resulted in an original and eclectic body of work, as evidenced by the selection of films in this series.
Winner of the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for Jane Fonda in 1980
The China Syndrome belongs to the political thriller genre, which was very popular in the 1970s following the success of Costa-Gavras' Z in 1969. Released a few days before the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the film helped fuel opposition to nuclear power among the American public.
James Bridges
James Bridges was an American screenwriter, film director, producer, and actor. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee: once for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Paper Chase (1973) and once for Best Original Screenplay for The China Syndrome (1979). He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents after catching the attention of Norman Lloyd, a producer for the series. Bridges went on to write and direct a number of notable films, including Urban Cowboy (1980), Perfect (1985) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988). He also wrote the screenplay of Joseph Sargent's Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) and co-wrote the screenplay of Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart (1990).
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, and producer, activist, pacifist and feminist. She is the daughter of actor Henri Fonda, the sister of actor and filmmaker Peter Fonda, and the aunt of actress Bridget Fonda. She made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl (1960), for which she received the first of two nominations at the Tony Award, and made her film debut that same year in Tall Story (1960). She rose to prominence in the 1960s, with Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967) et Barbarella (1968). Her work as a actress was widely celebrated. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), and won a BAFTA twice. She won seven Golden Globes, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2021. After the success of her home video series, Jane Fonda's Workout, and a fifteen year hiatus, she returned to cinema in the comedy Monster-in-Law (2005), and subsequently acted in films like Youth (2015) and Our Souls at Night (2017). She is still active today. As a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War, she was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi and protested the Iraq War in the 2000s. She describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist.
Photo: Collections de la Cinémathèque québécoise
