Home \ Signature Roles \ Julia (1977) — Jane Fonda
JANE FONDA · 1977 · SIGNATURE ROLES
Lillian Hellman and Julia were friends from childhood: Hellman became a famous playwright, Julia became an anti-fascist activist working against the Nazis, and the film follows Hellman’s journey to smuggle money to Julia in pre-war Europe.
Lillian Hellman and Julia were friends from childhood: Hellman became a famous playwright, Julia became an anti-fascist activist working against the Nazis, and the film follows Hellman’s journey to smuggle money to Julia in pre-war Europe. Jane Fonda plays Hellman as a woman torn between safety and loyalty, between the life she built and the friend who asks her to risk it.
Opposite Vanessa Redgrave’s luminous Julia, Fonda is the film’s anchor — wry, frightened, and finally brave, carrying money across a border with her heart in her throat. The film earned eleven Academy Award nominations, and Fonda’s performance, restrained where another actor would have emoted, is its moral center: a portrait of friendship as a political act.
