Mary Steenburgen on Aging, Advice from Jane Fonda, and Why Growing Older Can Still Be Fierce
At 72, Mary Steenburgen says a single conversation with 88-year-old Jane Fonda completely changed the way she thinks about aging, shifting her perspective from quiet anxiety to something closer to curiosity and even defiance. Their exchange, shared in a recent People interview and reported by Business Insider, offers a surprisingly intimate snapshot of how Hollywood’s older women are quietly rewriting the script on what it means to grow older in public.
In an industry addicted to youth, an Oscar winner in her seventies taking notes from an icon approaching ninety is more than a feel‑good story; it’s part of a larger cultural shift around aging, visibility, and power in Hollywood.
Mary Steenburgen and Jane Fonda: Two Generations of Hollywood Survivors
Mary Steenburgen has built a quietly formidable career across film and television: an Oscar winner for “Melvin and Howard,” a memorable presence in “Back to the Future Part III,” “Step Brothers,” and more recently “Book Club” and “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” She’s one of those actors everyone recognizes, even if they can’t always place from where.
Jane Fonda, meanwhile, is Hollywood royalty and a cultural barometer all on her own—two Oscars, the fitness‑tape revolution, decades of activism, and a late‑career resurgence with “Grace and Frankie.” At 88, she’s not just working; she’s shaping the way we talk about aging women on screen and off.
“And I looked at the fierce, insanely gorgeous blue eyes and thought, ‘I see what she means.’”
— Mary Steenburgen on Jane Fonda’s impact, via People
The Conversation That Changed Everything: Fonda’s No‑Nonsense Take on Aging
According to Steenburgen’s account, the turning point came during a candid moment with Fonda. She described looking into Fonda’s “fierce, insanely gorgeous blue eyes” and realizing that aging, at least as Fonda framed it, wasn’t about retreating. It was about staying fiercely present.
Fonda has long been public about her philosophy of aging: embrace the work, stay politically engaged, don’t pretend you’re 30, but don’t surrender to invisibility either. Steenburgen’s reaction suggests that hearing this from someone who is not just older, but visibly thriving, was a kind of permission slip.
In Hollywood terms, this sort of counsel is almost countercultural. Aging is usually something to be “fixed” or denied. Fonda’s advice—essentially, own it, and keep moving—runs the other direction, and Steenburgen appears to have taken it to heart.
Why This Resonates: Aging, Visibility, and Hollywood’s Double Standard
The Steenburgen–Fonda moment lands because it pushes back against a deeply entrenched industry rule: men “age into” gravitas; women age out of leading roles. Yet the last decade has seen a small but real correction, led in part by women like Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, and Steenburgen herself.
- On screen: Projects like “Book Club” and “Grace and Frankie” center women over 60 as desirable, complicated, and funny, not as background decoration.
- Off screen: Stars are more vocal about surgery, health, fitness, and the pressure to stay camera‑ready, making the process less mysterious and less shame‑filled.
Steenburgen’s story also hits a broader cultural nerve. As the population skews older and conversations about longevity, wellness, and “third acts” become mainstream, audiences are more open to seeing later‑life characters with real interior lives. Fonda’s advice isn’t just celebrity gossip; it tracks with a wider rethinking of what our seventies and eighties are supposed to look like.
The Power of Fonda’s Philosophy—and Where It Falls Short
Fonda’s approach to aging has several obvious strengths. It’s unapologetic, it’s active, and it refuses to let culture decide when you’re “done.” For someone like Steenburgen—still working, still curious—that’s galvanizing.
- It normalizes ambition later in life. Continuing to chase roles or creative projects at 70‑plus becomes less of an oddity and more of an expectation.
- It reframes appearance. Instead of pretending not to care, it’s about caring on your own terms—style as self‑expression, not desperation.
- It encourages connection. The advice came in a conversation between peers, not from a self‑help book, which makes it easier to internalize.
There are limits, of course. Aging with Fonda‑level resources—trainers, stylists, healthcare, the freedom to choose work—is a vastly different experience than it is for most people. Taking her philosophy seriously doesn’t mean pretending those structural advantages don’t exist.
Still, Steenburgen’s “I see what she means” is less about replicating Fonda’s regimen and more about inheriting her attitude: a refusal to let the camera—or the culture—decide when the story is over.
Cultural Ripples: From “Book Club” to Real‑World Attitudes on Aging
The fact that this story comes out of the promotional and interview ecosystem—People, Business Insider, red carpet chatter—matters. For decades, entertainment media treated aging actresses as either tragic or miraculous. Now, you increasingly see conversations that are neither: they’re analytical, funny, grounded.
Films like “Book Club” didn’t just tap into a niche; they performed well enough to justify sequels and imitators, signaling that audiences are willing to watch older women as leads, not side characters. Steenburgen and Fonda trading aging advice is both authentic friendship and smart branding, aligning them with a demographic Hollywood is finally realizing it can’t ignore.
The ripple effect is subtle: a quote here, an interview there, but cumulatively it helps normalize the idea that exciting chapters don’t end at 40—or 60, or even 80.
What This Means Beyond Hollywood: Takeaways for Everyday Aging
Most people won’t navigate aging with an Oscar on the shelf, but Steenburgen’s shift in perspective is still relatable. It’s less about career and more about how you narrate your own life.
- Find a role model ahead of you. Steenburgen has Fonda; you might have a neighbor, a relative, or a public figure who embodies the kind of older age you’d actually want.
- Talk about it openly. Their conversation underscores how powerful it can be simply to say, out loud, what scares or frustrates you about getting older.
- Redefine “future plans.” Planning at 72 or 88 doesn’t have to mean decades‑long blueprints. It can mean the next project, the next trip, the next creative experiment.
The entertainment industry may be late to the party, but when recognizable faces model a more nuanced, less fearful way of aging, it has a way of trickling down into everyday expectations.
Looking Ahead: Aging as a Creative, Not Just Biological, Process
Mary Steenburgen’s reflection on Jane Fonda’s advice is a small story with outsize symbolic weight. It captures a moment where older women in Hollywood are not only refusing to step offstage but are mentoring one another in how to stay there on their own terms.
As long as actors like Steenburgen and Fonda keep working—and keep talking this candidly about what that work means in their seventies and eighties—aging becomes less of a fade‑out and more of a rewrite. The next generation watching them, inside and outside the industry, will decide whether that rewrite sticks.
For now, one thing seems clear: those “fierce, insanely gorgeous blue eyes” aren’t just a compliment; they’re a reminder that there’s still plenty of story left to tell.
