(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Pictures)
Sun 14 December 2025 7:30, UK
If your Dad is an Oscar-nominated actor, and your Grandad was an Oscar-winning actor, and your Aunt is a two-time Oscar-winning actor, then you’re not going to grow up to work behind the deli counter at a supermarket, are you? And that very much proved to be the case for Bridget Fonda.
She duly followed her Dad Peter and his Dad Henry and her Aunt Jane into the world of Hollywood, firstly as an uncredited kid in Peter’s seminal biker trip Easy Rider, and then much later in the tail end of the 1980s, movies like John Hurt’s Scandal, for which she picked up a Golden Globe nomination and the original TV series 21 Jump Street with Johnny Depp.
But it was after a role in The Godfather Part III that she started to get cast consistently in major movies, including Michael J Fox’s Doc Hollywood (the first ever film in the UK to get a ‘12’ certificate, trivia fans) and the chaotic kids film Drop Dead Fred starring a peak Rik Mayall.
She landed her first leading role in the stalker thriller Single White Female opposite a fairly unhinged Jennifer Jason Leigh and followed it up with the Cameron Crowe grunge-era classic Singles in 1992. Both were decent-sized successes, and by now, Fonda was becoming a sought-after presence by casting directors.
In 1993, she won the lead role in Point of No Return, a remake of the French action film La Femme Nikita from 1990, which had been a big international hit and was Golden Globe-nominated for its director, Luc Besson. Co-starring Gabriel Byrne, it tells the story of a drug addict accused of murdering a policeman, who has her death faked in return for intensive training as an assassin, giving her deadly skills.
Fonda said at the time of release, “Normally, I don’t like remakes, and here I had the prospect of not only doing a remake but trying to do a remake of a movie that was really good. I was scared, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to do it.”
Helmed by Saturday Night Fever director John Badham, the US remake was a moderate success on release, and Fonda’s performance was hailed as a highlight, proving a very different role from anything she had done previously. She added, “I thought about it long and hard, and in the end, it was a character I just couldn’t refuse. It was a rare part for a woman, the kind that doesn’t come along twice, and I chose to do it for selfish reasons.”
Fonda went on to work consistently through the 1990s, including taking a part in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, which he offered her after a chance encounter on board a plane. If we had to recommend one of her movies from that era it would have to be Billy Bob Thornton’s brilliant thriller A Simple Plan from 1998, in which Fonda plays a dutiful wife dragged into a complex and deadly robbery. It was nominated for two Oscars and was directed by The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi.
She retired from acting at the start of the 2000s and hasn’t made a film since a romantic comedy co-starring Stanley Tucci called The Whole Shebang.
Related Topics