They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
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 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Jane Fonda in 1969
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people of all ages sought ways to escape poverty. Robert and his partner Gloria tried their luck at a dance marathon, but the adventure proved more perilous than expected.
Sydney Pollack
Sydney Pollack was an American actor, film director, and producer. He discovered theater in school thanks to a teacher who sparked his curiosity for acting. He went on to study drama in New York and joined the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, where he studied under Sanford Meisner, who had a decisive influence on his career. In 1965, he directed his first feature film, The Slender Thread, starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. The 1970s were particularly prolific for him: he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), his western Jeremiah Johnson (1972) was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and he directed Three Days of the Condor (1975), starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. He went on to direct some of his most iconic films: the comedy Tootsie (1982), the romantic epic Out of Africa (1985), which won seven Academy Awards, and the legal drama The Firm (1993). In the 1990s, Pollack made a notable return to his roots as an actor. He appeared in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He also appeared in Tony Gilroy's drama Michael Clayton (2007), his last notable role.
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
