Jane Fonda is shilling a new book,Prime Time, so she’s going to be making the interview rounds starting now. She sat down for a piece with Harper’s Bazaar for the September issue, and as much as I wanted to roll my eyes, I actually found much of the piece fascinating. You can read the whole Bazaar piece here, and some highlights are below. I know that some of you are going to bring up Vietnam and Hanoi Jane and all of the stuff that gets recycled endlessly whenever Jane’s name is mentioned. Here’s the thing: I do think Jane was really stupid back then, and her actions were ridiculous and completely inappropriate, if not criminal. But I also think that if Robert McNamara gets away with the “fog of war” excuse, maybe we should cut Jane a little slack, especially since her many, many apologies have seemed sincere and honest. That’s just my opinion.

Her 1970 mug shot for “drug smuggling” (they were vitamins): “It was like I had Richard Avedon in that jailhouse taking my mug shot; it’s a beautiful mug shot,” she pronounces. “My hair was in Klute mode. About four years ago, I went to the Sally Hershberger salon in New York and one entire wall, like six feet, was my mug shot!”

On her many changes over the years: In her new book, Prime Time, Fonda mentions daughter Vanessa’s suggestion that she illustrate the cover with a chameleon. “That was the rap on me,” she says. “When I was researching myself, I wondered, is there a ‘there’ there? Or am I just a hollow person who gets filled up by whatever man I’m with?” (She is currently dating music producer Richard Perry.) “I’m fine with women. My problem is always with men — you know, pleasing a man, turning myself into a pretzel to be who the man I’m with wants me to be. I’m not saying that that’s gone away 100 percent, but maybe 90 percent, 95 percent even.”

Jane’s Third Act: “Instead of viewing an arch — you rise, you peak, you decline — view it as a staircase,” she explains. “Your body may fall apart, but on every level that really matters, you can ascend toward enlightenment, wisdom, and authenticity. That’s what I’m going for.” Fonda is climbing the “staircase” two at a time. Prime Time is filled with advice ranging from pragmatic (“Figure out a baseline budget”) to penile. (“The penis starts to get smaller with age.”) What makes it so readable is her advice comes filtered through her personal experience.

Body image, the 1950s, and Henry Fonda: “I was raised in the ’50s,” she explains. “I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly. He was a good man, and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send: Unless you look perfect, you’re not going to be loved.”

She was a fanatic for exercise, and she battled bulimia for decades: “I wasn’t very happy from, I would say, puberty to 50? It took me a long time. It was in my 40s, and if you suffer from bulimia, the older you get, the worse it gets. It takes longer to recover from a bout. I had a career, I was winning awards, I was supporting nonprofits, I had a family.” One day she just stopped. “I had to make a choice: I live or I die.” She refocused, trying to “fill that empty space with something.” Then came the workouts. “Gloria Steinem said empowerment begins in the muscles.”

She still exercises: In 30 years, Fonda has sold more than 17 million fitness books and videos, with Fit & Strong and Walk Out the latest. “I have a six-pack back,” she laughs about modeling a backless number in Naomi Campbell’s Fashion for Relief runway show in Cannes. “I don’t do lunges, though, because I have a fake knee and a fake hip. I set off as many bells and whistles at an airport as I did on that runway!”

Vanities: “I’m vain. My arms are thin, but I’m vain about loose flesh. And so I’m careful that what I wear will show off my best parts, which are my waist and my butt.” That said, “I have people in my life who will say, ‘Honey, you’re trying too hard.’ I like being saucy, but I’m 73 and a half. I’m still trying to find my way between matronly and coltishness. Colt, not cult: C-O-L-T.”

Jane’s thoughts on Lindsay Lohan: “I have nothing but compassion for her. I don’t think she has ever experienced a chaos-free life.” Leaving Hollywood would help. “It would require someone to put their arms around her and take her away someplace, maybe New Zealand, where she had absolutely no temptation. She would have to be surrounded with love.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

It’s interesting that she still won’t say one bad word about her father. Everyone else has talked sh-t about what a bastard Henry Fonda was in real life, but Jane has never gotten on that bandwagon. I also like Jane’s thoughts on Linnocent – the subtext being that Linnocent will never “get better” if she stays in Hollywood, or New York, or any place where she has easy access to a dealer. Of course, you could drop Linnocent in the Sahara and she would find something to snort.

Photos courtesy of WENN