Inside the 3 Generations of Fonda Family Stars: From Henry and Jane to Bridget and Troy Garity
Meet the Fonda family: 3 generations of actors spanning 80+ years of movie and TV stardom
In Hollywood, children of famous actors becoming actors themselves is commonplace, but having a family with three generations of actors stretching back all the way to the Golden Age is pretty rare. One of the few families to accomplish this feat is the Fondas, as Henry Fonda was the father of Jane and Peter Fonda and grandfather of Peter’s daughter, Bridget Fonda, and Jane’s son, Troy Garity.
While Henry and Peter Fonda are no longer with us, and Bridget retired from acting in the early ’00s, the cinematic achievements of the family are impressive and wide-ranging, and their combined award-winning filmography spans decades and genres.
Read on to learn all about the Fonda family and see how the three generations of talented actors went from ’40s Hollywood to the ’60s underground to ’00s TV—and beyond.
Henry Fonda: The Golden Age Hollywood patriarch of the Fonda family
Henry Fonda, the patriarch of the acting family, was born in 1905. He began acting in the ’30s and earned a reputation as one of the classic Hollywood stars who best embodied the everyman archetype thanks to his roles in films like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), The Wrong Man (1956) and 12 Angry Men (1957). Henry was also highly regarded for performances in the classic Westerns The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Fort Apache (1948), and he famously played Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).
Henry’s acting career encompassed over 100 films across five decades, and he shared the screen with his daughter, Jane, in the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, which would be his final film before he died from heart disease at age 77 in 1982.
Henry was married five times, to actress Margaret Sullavan; socialite Frances Ford Seymour, who gave birth to Jane Fonda in 1937 and Peter Fonda in 1940, and tragically died by suicide in 1950; socialite Susan Blanchard; baroness Afdera Franchetti; and model and flight attendant Shirlee Mae Adams. Jane and Peter were Henry’s only biological children. In 1953, during his marriage to Blanchard, he adopted a daughter, Amy, who has since stayed out of the spotlight.
Henry had a tense relationship with his children. Peter called him a “forbidding figure,” and Jane said, “My dad was not a communicative person. He just didn’t know how. And so I would’ve made myself miserable to expect him to be that way.” Jane said that she and Henry bonded through playing father and daughter in On Golden Pond, while Peter gave Henry a small role in his film Wanda Nevada, which he directed and starred in.
Jane revealed that she reconciled with her famous father before he passed, saying, “Before he died I was able to tell him that I loved him and that I forgave him for, you know, whatever didn’t happen. And I hope that he would forgive me for not being a better daughter. I got to say that to him. He didn’t say anything. But he wept. I had never seen that before . . . It was powerful.” Similarly, Peter described finally making up with Henry in his memoir, writing that after years of struggle, he and his dad could finally admit their love for one another and saying he felt, “satisfied that I had parted with my father in a very pure way.”
Jane Fonda: Henry Fonda’s daughter, ’60s sex symbol and living legend
Jane Fonda was born in 1937 and began acting in the ’60s. Her role in the campy 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella established her as one of the era’s biggest sex symbols, and as her career continued through the ’70s and beyond, she received much acclaim, earning Oscar nominations for her work in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981) and The Morning After (1986) and winning Best Actress for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978).
Jane attracted controversy for her activism against the Vietnam War, and has remained politically engaged in the decades since then. In the ’80s, she became a key figure in the aerobics craze of the era thanks to her popular home workout videos.
Jane has continued to keep busy well into her senior years, starring opposite her 9 to 5 (1980) castmate Lily Tomlin in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie from 2015 to 2022 and acting in ensemble comedies like Book Club (2018) and 80 for Brady (2023).
Jane has been married three times. Her first husband, Roger Vadim, directed her in Barbarella and other films, and the couple had a daughter, Vanessa. Jane then married political activist and writer Tom Hayden, and their son, Troy, went on to become an actor. They also unofficially adopted a daughter, Mary, when she was a teenager. Jane’s final marriage was to entrepreneur Ted Turner.
Jane has been candid about the experience of growing up in a famous family and how it impacted her career, saying, “Some people wanted to be my friend because my father was Henry Fonda; some people didn’t like me because my father was Henry Fonda. There was both good and bad. When I became an actress, the fact that my father was a movie star was an advantage—no question—because people paid more attention to me than they would have if I were just another actress. Also, internally, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t getting parts because I was Henry Fonda’s daughter, so I worked harder. Instead of taking one class a week, I would take four, so no one could say I was a dilettante.”
Peter Fonda: Henry Fonda’s son, counterculture icon and action star
Peter Fonda was born in 1940 and like his older sister, he rose to prominence in the ’60s as a star who embodied the era, with movies like The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967). His role as a biker in the 1969 road movie Easy Rider, which he also wrote, made him an icon of the hippie movement, and he went on to act in action movies like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), Race With the Devil (1975) and Futureworld (1976). He shared the screen with his dad in Wanda Nevada (1979) and his sister in Spirits of the Dead (1968).
Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Peter appeared in The Cannonball Run (1981), Escape From L.A. (1996) and The Limey (1999). His Oscar-nominated performance in the 1997 film Ulee’s Gold was widely considered a return to form, and he later acted in Wild Hogs and 3:10 to Yuma (both 2007).
While Peter appeared in more films than Jane did, he never quite reached her same level of widespread acclaim, and acted in many B-movies before he died of lung cancer at age 79 in 2019.
Peter and his first wife, Susan Brewer, had a daughter, Bridget, who became an actress, and a son, Justin, who went on to work behind the scenes as an assistant cameraman. Peter was then married to Portia Rebecca Crockett and Margaret DeVogelaere.
Peter was honest about the struggles of having a famous family, writing in his memoir that, “having glamorous parents and luxurious homes in Los Angeles and suburban Connecticut didn’t mean having a storybook childhood.” Following his death, Jane described him as, “my sweet-hearted baby brother, the talker of the family.”
Bridget Fonda: Peter Fonda’s daughter, ’90s It Girl and recluse
Bridget Fonda was born in 1964. As the daughter of Peter, niece of Jane and granddaughter of Henry, she was destined for stardom, and even made her screen debut with an uncredited appearance in Easy Rider as a child. She later acted with her father in Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993) and South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000).
Bridget first received notice for her performance in The Godfather Part III (1990), and became a ’90s It Girl thanks to her roles in films like Single White Female (1992), Singles (1992), Point of No Return (1993), It Could Happen to You (1994), Jackie Brown (1997) and A Simple Plan (1998).
Bridget appeared in Monkeybone and Kiss of the Dragon in 2001, and had her final role in the 2002 TV movie Snow Queen before she retired to raise her family. She married musician and film composer Danny Elfman in 2003 and they have a son, Oliver.
Since her retirement, Bridget has kept out of the spotlight. Musing on her famous lineage before she retired, she said, “I often wonder what it would be like to come into this completely fresh—when I see people from a non-entertainment-industry family who’ve made it, I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re here because of your own efforts—the way you’re perceived isn’t based on someone else’s achievements.’ I can’t allow myself that, because I always factor in nepotism. Still, if no one wanted to watch me, I guess they’d have stopped hiring me a long time ago.”
Troy Garity: Jane Fonda’s son (without the Fonda name) and TV star
The youngest member of the Fonda acting clan, Troy Garity, was born to Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden in 1973. Since both of his parents were in the public eye, they decided to give him Hayden’s paternal grandmother’s maiden name so that he wouldn’t have the baggage of a famous name.
Even though Troy didn’t have the Fonda name, he still followed in his family’s footsteps, and made his debut as a child, with an uncredited appearance alongside his mom and grandpa in On Golden Pond. In 2000, he played his father in Steal This Movie, a film based on the counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s. Troy had his breakout role in the 2002 comedy Barbershop and came back for the film’s sequels.
Troy then acted in Sunshine (2007), The Good Doctor (2011), Gangster Squad (2013) and Sabotage (2014), and was in the cast of the TV shows Boss (2011 to 2012), Ballers (2015 to 2019) and On the Verge (2021).
Troy is married to Simone Bent. He said that his parents initially didn’t want him to act and told an interviewer, “I don’t think about the Fonda legacy much. That could be due to unneeded pressure, or [that] it doesn’t really mean that much to me. I grew up around acting, but it was never thought of as a career.”
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