Jane Fonda contemplated her “complicated” marriage to media mogul Ted Turner in an exceptionally earnest tribute she shared on social media following news he had died at age 87.
Offering her “immediate thoughts about Ted” in a Wednesday afternoon Instagram post, the Hollywood veteran and lifelong activist looked back on their relationship as “challenging” while adding that she had “always been up for a challenge, and with Ted it was almost always worth it.”
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“He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same,” she said of Turner, who was her husband from 1991 until their 2001 divorce.
Explaining how it felt for the multifaceted billionaire to need her love, Fonda wrote, “No one had ever let me know they needed me, and this wasn’t your average human being that needed me, this was the creator of CNN, and Turner Classic Movies, who had won the America’s Cup as the world’s greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor.”
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She also acknowledged his ability to care for her. “To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative,” she wrote.
“Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do,” the Oscar-winner went on, calling Turner’s ability to be vulnerable one of his “greatest strengths.”
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Fonda said she learned more from Turner than “more than any other person or school classes” could teach before remarking how he was the “most competitive person” she had ever met ― besides storied actor Katharine Hepburn ― and how “fascinating” that was “to witness.”
“Whether it was who’d made the most ski runs at the end of the day, to acres of land owned (stewarded is the more fitting word for his relationship to land), who had the most billions, how many countries he’d made love to his prior lover in and could I match that, it was challenging,” she said.
Continuing her lengthy homage in the comment section, the “Barbarella” star said, “I loved Ted with all my heart.”
“I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped bring back from extinction,” Fonda went on. “The black footed ferrets, the prairie dogs, Big Horned sheep, Mexican Gray Wolf, the Yellowstone wolf pack, bison, the red cockaded woodpecker and so many more, they’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species.”
Addressing the five offspring that now survive Turner, she called them, “five talented, complex kids who I had the privilege of becoming stepmother to.”
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“I love them to this day,” she went on. “If it was complicated to be married to him, think how complicated it was being his child. And they are all doing fine.”
“Rest in Peace, dearest Ted,” her message ended. “You are loved and you will be remembered.”
Less than a week before his death, Fonda called the television trailblazer her “favorite ex-husband” during the opening of this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, adding that founding the festival’s namesake network, Turner Classic Movies, is just one of the “great things that he did.”
Turner will also be remembered as the creator of CNN, the world’s first 24-hour cable news channel, as well as WTBS and TNT.
