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Actress Jane Fonda Says She Has Cancer

Cast member Jane Fonda attends a special event for the television series "Grace and Frankie" in Los Angeles, California, US, April 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Cast member Jane Fonda attends a special event for the television series "Grace and Frankie" in Los Angeles, California, US, April 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
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Actress Jane Fonda Says She Has Cancer

Cast member Jane Fonda attends a special event for the television series "Grace and Frankie" in Los Angeles, California, US, April 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Cast member Jane Fonda attends a special event for the television series "Grace and Frankie" in Los Angeles, California, US, April 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

US actress and activist Jane Fonda announced Friday that she has cancer, and has begun chemotherapy in her battle against the disease.

The 84-year-old Oscar winner, a prominent supporter of the Democratic Party, vowed to fight the "very treatable" illness.

"I've been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and have started chemo treatments," she wrote on her verified Instagram account.

"This is a very treatable cancer. 80 percent of people survive, so I feel very lucky.

"I'm also lucky because I have health insurance and access to the best doctors and treatments."

Fonda, an avowed environmentalist and social campaigner, said her position was more fortunate than that of many others in her situation, AFP reported.

"Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another and far too many don't have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right," she wrote.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a kind of cancer that starts in the lymphatic system, a part of the body's immune defenses, and can develop into widespread tumors.

According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms can include: swollen lymph nodes, abdominal pain or swelling, chest pain, coughing or trouble breathing, as well as persistent fatigue and fever.

"In most instances, doctors don't know what causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," the clinic says on its website.

"It begins when your body produces too many abnormal lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell."

Usually those cells die, and the body creates new ones to replace them -- but in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, they don't, even as the body keeps making more.

"This oversupply of lymphocytes crowds into your lymph nodes, causing them to swell," the clinic's website states.

- Climate activism -
Fonda vowed that her treatment will not impede her environmental campaigning, and urged action on fossil fuel use, which she linked to cancer.

"I'm doing chemo for six months and am handling the treatments quite well and, believe me, I will not let any of this interfere with my climate activism.

"We're living through the most consequential time in human history because what we do or don't do right now will determine what kind of future there will be.

"I will not allow cancer to keep me from doing all I can, using every tool in my toolbox."

She pointed to the November midterm elections which could determine whether US President Joe Biden's Democrats lose control of both houses of Congress, saying they were "beyond consequential."

As a result, "you can count on me to be right there together with you as we grow our army of climate champions," she wrote.

Fonda first appeared on screen in 1960, and scored Academy Awards for best actress for "Klute" (1971) and "Coming Home" (1978).

She has five other Oscar nominations in her career, four of them for best lead actress.

As well as anti-war activism during the US-Vietnam war that saw her dubbed "Hanoi Jane" and blacklisted in Hollywood, she was also a major figure in the home fitness video craze of the 1980s.

Fonda continues to work, and appears as the voice of an elegant dragon who is the CEO of a luck-making operation in the Apple TV+ animated movie "Luck."

She also stars in the popular, long-running Netflix hit "Grace and Frankie."

Fonda comes from a family of famous stars; her father Henry was a legend of the big screen appearing as the hold-out juror in "12 Angry Men," and winning best actor for "On Golden Pond" (1981).

Her brother Peter was a seminal figure in 1960s counterculture, whose turn in "Easy Rider" is a touchstone of Hollywood history.

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JoJo Was a Teen Sensation. At 33, She’s Found Her Voice Again

Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
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JoJo Was a Teen Sensation. At 33, She’s Found Her Voice Again

Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)

Joanna Levesque shot to stardom at 13. Two decades later, “JoJo” — as she’s better known — has written a memoir and says the song responsible for her meteoric rise, “Leave (Get Out),” was foreign to her. In fact, she cried when her label told her they wanted to make it her first single.

Lyrics about a boy who treated her poorly were not relatable to the sixth grader who recorded the hit. And sonically, the pop sound was far away from the young prodigy's R&B and hip-hop comfort zone.

“I think that’s where the initial seed of confusion was planted within me, where I was like, 'Oh, you should trust other people over yourself because ... look at this. You trusted other people and look how big it paid off,’” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

“Leave (Get Out)” went on to top the Billboard charts, making Levesque the youngest solo artist ever to have a No. 1 hit.

“I grew to love it. But initially, I just didn’t get it,” she said.

Much of Levesque’s experience with young pop stardom was similarly unpredictable or tumultuous, and she details those feelings in her new memoir, “Over the Influence.”

With “Leave (Get Out)” and her several other commercial hits like “Too Little Too Late” and “Baby It’s You,” Levesque’s formative years were spent in recording studios and tour buses. Still, she had a strong resonance with teens and young people, and her raw talent grabbed the attention of music fans of all ages.

“Sometimes, I don’t know what to say when people are like, ‘I grew up with you’ and I’m like, ‘We grew up together’ because I still am just a baby lady. But I feel really grateful to have this longevity and to still be here after all the crazy stuff that was going on,” she said.

Some of that “crazy stuff” Levesque is referring to is a years-long legal battle with her former record label. Blackground Records, which signed her as a 12-year-old, stalled the release of her third album and slowed down the trajectory of her blazing career.

Levesque said she knows, despite the hurdles and roadblocks the label and its executives put in her path, they shaped “what JoJo is."

“Even though there were things that were chaotic and frustrating and scary and not at all what I would have wanted to go through, I take the good and the bad,” she said.

Levesque felt like the executives and team she worked with at the label were family, describing them as her “father figures and my uncles and my brothers." “I love them, now, still, even though it didn’t work out,” she said.

With new music on the way, Levesque said she thinks the industry is headed in a direction that grants artists more freedom over their work and more of a voice in discussions about the direction of their careers. In 2018, she re-recorded her first two albums, which were not made available on streaming, to regain control of the rights. Three years later, Taylor Swift started doing the same.

“Things are changing and it’s crumbling — the old way of doing things,” she said. “I think it’s great. The structure of major labels still offers a lot, but at what cost?”

As she looks forward to the next chapter of her already veteran-level career, Levesque said it’s “refreshing” for her to see a new generation of young women in music who are defying the standards she felt she had to follow when she was coming up.

“'You have to be nice. You have to be acceptable in these ways. You have to play these politics of politeness.’ It’s just exhausting,” she said, “So many of us that grew up with that woven into the fabric of our beliefs burn out and crash and burn.”

It’s “healing” to see artists like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish play by their own rules, she said.

In writing her memoir and tracing her life from the earliest childhood memories to today, Levesque said she’s “reclaiming ownership” over her life.

“My hope is that other people will read this, in my gross transparency sometimes in this book, and hopefully be inspired to carve their own path, whatever that looks like for them.”