I finally met Patti Lupone. You can’t be on Broadway for long without knowing her legendary status. I had never seen her in anything but she sent me flowers when I was nominated for a Tony Award and we have been emailing. She and Mandy Patinkin are performing in L.A. At the Ahmanson Theatre. A new and compelling compilation of show tunes. She knocked me socks off—and about 3000 other people. I invited her, her husband and son to join me, Carrie Fisher, Richard Perry and my son and daughter-in-law for dinner after the show. Patti turns out to be a real mensch…easy to be with, interesting to talk to and she …

This is the longest I’ve gone without blogging for some time. But sometimes you just have to let life play itself out without comment. Like so many people, I have been in a wash of images and feelings about Michael Jackson. I knew him as well as one could know him during the time before he did “The Wiz” and up through “Thriller.” I couldn’t pretend to understand him. There were so many complicated signals. Did he want me to be his ‘older women’ friend. He gravitated to older women. For solace? Succor? A beard? Did he want me to teach him the ropes? I never could quite figure it out. But I …

Charlie Evans comes to my house 3 times a week to do physical therapy with me following my knee replacement surgery. She is knowledgable, skillful, even sensual in her approach. She has the ability to push me beyond my comfort zone.

Charlie is a black woman in her fifties who, for years, has worked at the Watts Clinic every morning with a severly underserved population..

She told me how lucky I am to have had a talented surgeon. She didn’t need to tell me, I already knew it. I am privileged. “The people I work with in Watts cannot afford such excellent surgery”, Charlie says. She told me she works with people who have far from adequate health care, who know very …

I won the Broadway.com Best Actress award last May for my performance in “33 Variations”

video courtesy of Broadway.com

A recent article in the Daily Mail reports that my knee replacement surgery was the result of years of repetitive pounding from doing my Jane Fonda Workout programs. Wrong! It is a result of osteoarthritis which my father, Henry Fonda, also suffered from, as does my brother, Peter, who may need hip replacement soon. You never saw them doing the Jane Fonda Workouts. My family’s osteoarthritis (the gradual disappearance of joint cartilage) is a matter of genes, not working out. I am sure that my 25 years of eating disorders didn’t help the condition, and perhaps my decade of running made it worse. But sooner or later I would have needed joint replacement even if I had been …

The longest day of the year. The opposite side of the calendar from my Winter Solstice birthday.

Continuing to be glued to Iran but also about to start writing-not the blog but my book-after a looooong hiatus. First though, some random replies to blog comments:

Enough already with nostalgia about the 60s movement. Different times, different context. There was the draft, the cultural revolution, I think there is still courage and inspiration out there today but it takes different forms and the new social media is fueling it. Obama would never have been elected were this not so. Look at how he raised money. Revolutionary. Looked how his campaign galvanized young people and people of color. Revolutionary. He is a product of …