Jane Fonda Says ‘Woke Just Means You Give a Damn About Other People,’ Calls on Hollywood to Fight With Empathy in SAG Awards Speech

Jane Fonda is urging Hollywood to fight these fraught times with empathy.

“What we, actors, create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls,” said Fonda, who was honored on Sunday night with SAG’s life achievement award. “And make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”

During her lively speech, Fonda made oblique references to the political environment and the Trump administration’s drive to cut federal jobs. “A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening,” she said. “Even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to not judge but listen from our hearts.”

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Fonda also spoke to the power of unions — like SAG-AFTRA — to protect people during unsettling moments in history. “I’m a big believer in unions. They have our backs,” she said. “They bring us into community, and they give us power. Community means power, and this is really important right now when workers’ power has been attacked and community is being weakened.”

A six-decade Hollywood veteran, Fonda’s career spans film, television and theater with credits ranging from “Klute,” “Coming Home,” “9 to 5,” “Monster-In-Law,” “Grace & Frankie,” “Book Club” and “80 for Brady.” From those acclaimed works and others, the 87-year-old Fonda has won two Oscars, an Emmy and seven Golden Globes — and so many nominations — as well as life achievement awards from organizations including AFI and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Julie Louis-Dreyfus presented the honor to Fonda, whom she described as a woman whose “life on and off the screen has simply been epic.” Louis-Dreyfus also praised Fonda’s seemingly boundless energy. “For the love of God! Slow down, Jane. You’re making us all look like shit.”

SAG-AFTRA bestows the life achievement award to “an actor who fosters the finest ideals of the acting profession.” Fonda is the 60th recipient, with past honorees including Barbra Streisand, Sally Field and Helen Mirren.

“I’ve had a really weird career — totally unstrategic,” Fonda said during her lengthy speech, which was plagued with sound and mic issues. “I retired for 15 years and came back at 65, which is not usual. 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.”

Fonda, who referred to herself as a late bloomer, told the audience that she became an actor because she 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,” she cracked.

In addition to her endeavors on stage and screen, Fonda is well-known for her activism in civil rights, gender equality and the anti-war movement. She’s also been vocal in raising awareness around the global climate crisis. In October 2019, Fonda was arrested five times — and brought famous friends like Ted Danson, Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette along with her — for protesting outside the United States Capitol for reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

During her speech on Sunday, Fonda also spoke about resistance against McCarthyism, a period of anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s.

“I made my first movie in 1958. It was at the tail end of McCarthyism, when so many careers were destroyed,” she said. “Today, it’s helpful to remember, though, that Hollywood resisted.”

She then asked the crowd: “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements — apartheid or civil rights or Stonewall — and ask yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? We don’t have to wonder anymore. We are in our documentary moment. This is it, and it’s not a rehearsal!”

Fonda concluded her rousing speech by calling on Hollywood to channel optimism and believe that on the other side, “there will still be love, there will still be beauty, and there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in.”

But, she heeded, “We mustn’t, for a moment, kid ourselves about what is happening. This is big time serious, folks. Let’s be brave. We must not isolate. We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiriting vision of the future.”