Jane Fonda is letting her 85th birthday pass by calmly this Wednesday.

The Hollywood icon celebrated in advance – on November 10th, she held a fundraiser in Atlanta.

The income from the donation gala goes to her aid organization GCAPP, with which the actress and activist in the US state of Georgia supports adolescents, for example with programs to prevent teenage pregnancy.

Fonda had already dedicated her 80th birthday to her long-standing heart project.

She can't extend her life, but she can make it "broader and deeper," Fonda told People magazine in November.

"I hope I can be an example to young people so that they are not afraid of getting older."

Fonda, who, in addition to acting, has been campaigning for peace, feminism and environmental protection since the 1960s, has remained a liberal activist.

Wearing a bright red coat and hat, she defied the crowd at a Fire Drill Fridays protest in Washington in early December.

Fonda has been part of the demonstrations against climate change since 2019 and has been arrested several times.

"Best Birthday Present Ever"

She didn't want to let her cancer slow her down, she explained in September when she let the public know via Instagram that she had been diagnosed with so-called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She started chemotherapy and tolerated it quite well, wrote the two-time Oscar winner on the social network.

Illness and treatment would not slow down her commitment to climate protection, she asserted.

Almost a week before her birthday, Fonda shared good news from her doctors.

Her cancer is in remission, she could stop chemotherapy.

This is the "best birthday present ever," she gushed on Instagram.

"A bit of fun"

Even in front of the camera, Fonda is still involved at the age of 85.

"What can I say?

Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Sally Field and I love to have some fun!" she wrote on Instagram in mid-December alongside a movie poster for road trip comedy 80 for Brady, which is slated to hit theaters in February.

The film, starring the gray-haired quartet of women (aged 76 to 91), is inspired by a true story.

Four best friends traveled to the Super Bowl in 2017 to catch star quarterback Tom Brady.

The American football superstar naturally plays in the strip.

This reunites old friends Fonda and Tomlin, who have been making the seven-season Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie since 2015.

In it, they play longtime wives whose husbands unexpectedly come out as gay.

Out of necessity, the manager and the art teacher move in together and master their new life together.

In 1960 she stood in front of the camera for the first time

Fonda has a turbulent past.

She was twelve years old when her mother took her own life.

She grew up with her grandmother in the US state of Connecticut.

As the daughter of stage and screen star Henry Fonda and sister to Peter Fonda, acting was in her blood.

She learned her craft at the famous New York Actors Studio.

New York theater critics celebrated her in 1960 as "best young actress".

She made her film debut with Anthony Perkins in the romantic comedy Tall Story (1960).

A little later she followed the French director Roger Vadim, who had previously discovered Brigitte Bardot, to Paris.

He gave her several roles and made her a world-famous sex symbol with the erotic science fiction film "Barbarella".

Back in Hollywood, Fonda earned her first Oscar nomination as a marathon dancer in the drama Only Horses Are Killed.

She won the coveted prize twice: in 1971 for her role as a prostitute in "Klute" and in 1978 for the Vietnam War drama "Coming Home".

Films like "The China Syndrome" and the family drama "Am Goldenen See" followed - the first and only film

"Who cares if I lose my joints?"

With aerobic videos, and later also with stretching and yoga, Fonda built up a fitness empire in the 1980s.

Decades later, she received an artificial knee joint and a new hip.

Last April she spoke about getting older.

“I am very aware that I am closer to death.

And I don't really mind that much," she said on the CBS Sunday Morning television show.

"The fact is, at almost 85, I'm still alive and working.

Wow!

Who cares if I don't have my old joints anymore?

And no longer skiing, cycling or jogging?” You can feel really old at 60 and “really young” at 85.

The actress has been married three times.

Fonda had a daughter with her first husband, Roger Vadim.

She also had a biological son and an adopted daughter with activist and politician Tom Hayden.

Fonda's third husband was media entrepreneur Ted Turner, from whom she divorced in 2001.