Jane Fonda, the Academy Award-winning actor and author who is also known for her activism, will headline the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism commencement ceremony as its 2025 keynote speaker, the school announced Thursday morning.
Over her 60-year career, Fonda has received two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. She has also received nominations for a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards.
She has received an Honorary Palme d’Or, an American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement award, a Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Fonda is a founder of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee and the nonprofit organization the Women’s Media Center.
“[Fonda] reminds us that communication — whether through story, advocacy or dialogue — is an essential catalyst for positive change, and inspires our class of 2025 to use their voices with purpose,” Annenberg’s Dean, Willow Bay, said in a statement.
Fonda is also an activist, beginning with the counterculture movement during the Vietnam War. She was also a protester of the Iraq War, and is a self-described feminist and environmentalist.
Now in what she calls her “Third Act,” Fonda has dedicated her career to climate activism. In 2021, she published “What Can I Do?: The Path from Climate Despair to Action,” which discussed her own journey in advocacy and outlined actions to combat climate change. Fonda spent her 82nd birthday in jail after being arrested at a climate protest in Washington, D.C.
That protest was part of a series she organized in partnership with Greenpeace, named “Fire Drill Fridays.” She founded the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, a political action committee whose purpose is to “defeat fossil fuel supporters and elect climate champions at all levels of government.”
Fonda previously spoke at Annenberg in April 2024, as part of the USC Center for Climate Journalism and Communication’s “Temperature Check” speaker series with Bay.
In their conversation, Fonda detailed how she was motivated to organize against climate change by the 2019 California wildfires. The most important action young people can take is to vote, she told Annenberg Media.
Fonda will take the stage again, this time at the Shrine Auditorium, for the school’s commencement ceremony on May 16.