Jane Fonda says director asked to sleep with her before filming sex scene

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN

(CNN) — Jane Fonda has revealed that a film director once asked to sleep with her “to see what my orgasms were like.”

The legendary Hollywood star made the startling revelation this week when she appeared on the Bravo talk show “Watch What Happens Live.”

In a section called “Plead the Fifth,” Fonda was asked to name one man in Hollywood who “tried to pick you up once who you turned down.”

Fonda, 85, came straight out and said: “The French director René Clément,” referring to the award-winning director of films including “La bataille du rail” (“The Battle of the Rails”) and the Oscar-nominated “Jeux interdits” (“Forbidden Games”). Clément died in 1996.

Although Fonda did not name the film, she starred in Clément’s 1964 movie “Les Félins” (known in English as “The Love Cage” or “Joy House”)., which he directed and co-wrote.

“Was it a sloppy pass?” asked Andy Cohen, host of the show.

Fonda, who was seated on the couch alongside Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, who also star in Fonda’s latest movie, “Book Club: The Next Chapter,” said: “Well, he wanted to go to bed with me because he said the character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what my orgasms were like.”

“Are you kidding me?” Cohen responded.

Fonda replied: “He said it in French and I pretended I didn’t understand.”

Fonda’s revelation is the latest in a wave of high-profile allegations of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood since the #Metoo movement went viral in 2017.

Fonda, who has been married three times, added: “I’ve stories for you, kid… we don’t have time.”

Nevertheless, she went on to add that she had seen both Michael Jackson and Greta Garbo swimming naked.

Of the first, she said: “He came and visited me when we were shooting ‘On Golden Pond’ and I had a little cottage on the lake.”

The late pop star decided to swim naked. “It was a beautiful moonlit night,” said Fonda, who described him as having been “skinny.”

Garbo had dived into freezing cold water, Fonda recalled. “She had the most athletic body.”

Fonda’s response to Cohen was in relation to the second of three questions – to one of which she was able to “plead the fifth.”

In her long career, Fonda has won the best actress Oscar twice, for “Klute” and “Coming Home,” and been nominated for five other Academy Awards.

As his first question, Cohen asked which of those nominations she felt was “most deserving” of the title. She chose the 1982 movie “On Golden Pond,” in which she starred alongside her father, Henry Fonda.

Finally, Cohen asked: “After your decades working in the entertainment industry, who do you think is the biggest misogynist in Hollywood?”

“Oh my God,” Fonda replied in mock horror. “I plead the fifth.”

The-CNN-Wire
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