“I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an antiaircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes.”

6/20/00 10:55 a..m.
Hanoi Jane Regrets
“I was wrong.”

Jane Fonda in her interview in O! magazine

n a interview with Oprah Winfrey, in her magazine O!, "Hanoi Jane," Jane Fonda rethinks her youth:

O: But as a person who wanted to please — to be liked — how did you handle being seen as a traitor?

JF: I put a callus over my heart. I felt that what we were doing was right. And I had a strong network of friends, and I just went ahead. Except for intimacy, I'm very brave! You have to stay vulnerable to be open to intimacy, to keep learning and growing. You have to be able to say, "I was wrong." You have to accept responsibility for your mistakes and learn from them.

O: Have you done that?

JF: I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an antiaircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. That had nothing to do with the context that photograph was taken in. But it hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was just thoughtless. I wasn't thinking, I was just so bowled over by the whole experience that I didn't realize what it would look like.

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