What is she courageous about today that she might not have been in her 30s or 40s?

I’ve always been brave. I just didn’t always know what to be brave about until my mid-thirties. I became involved in the anti-war movement. I lived in Paris. I was married to a Frenchman. He’d been married to Brigitte Bardot before me and Catherine Deneuve. Then he had to try his hand in America. I’ve always been brave, but it was just different. I would gallop on a horse bareback through the woods. I would do my own stunts. It’s like resilience—you’re either born with it or you’re not. You can be two siblings born at the same time of the same parents and one be resilient and the other not.

She’s been taking a stand her whole life—and has been paying the price for it her whole life. Why?

I was 33 years old when I became an activist, and my life before then was so silly, so nothing, so meaningless. And when I became an activist, I met entirely different kinds of people. They’re the people that are my friends now. In the ’70s around Vietnam, there was a backlash. But I was part of a movement. I was not alone. This is very important.

She defended Mark Ruffalo against accusations of antisemitism. Is there a blacklist of actors in Hollywood?

Oh, absolutely. This is a tactic that they’re doing. Larry Ellison, because he doesn’t like Mark Ruffalo’s position on the merger, accuses him of antisemitism when he said nothing that isn’t within his constitutional right to say. He should be ashamed of himself, Larry Ellison.

She was talking about her own movement.

Mark is part of a movement [too]. He’s not alone. This is a time when we have to stick together. We can’t be alone. They can pick us off when we’re alone. I knew in my heart that what I had done was not what they accused me of. And so you don’t mind it. You just keep on. And now they’re dead and I’m popular again. But I’m glad that I know what it feels like to be hated.

And how does it feel?

Not good. There was a time when I had no idea if there were death threats. Our homes were broken into.

Is it harder to speak out today, with Donald Trump’s rise to power?

Not for me. I’ve had my life. He can do nothing to me. I’m not scared. But that’s not true for everyone, and I understand that. And that’s why I’m encouraging people to join the movement. I created the Committee for the First Amendment a year ago, October 1. It existed in the ’40s and ’50s as a way to confront McCarthy and the witch hunts. My dad was a member. And we have thousands and thousands and thousands of members, and we have them come together.

And is it harder for them to take a stand?

More and more of them are speaking out. I’ll tell you why. Their whole lives are at risk right now. AI can take away their job, it could take away everything. And then data centers are being put in their neighborhoods that are destroying all of this. There’s been a shift in the US. Things are changing. Republicans and Democrats alike are standing there saying, no, you’re not going to put a data center in my community. No, you’re not going to put a detention center.

So do you have hope for your country?

Yes, I’m absolutely hopeful. Hope is different than optimism. Optimism is saying everything is all right. Hope comes with action. It’s a muscle. And the reason that I can be hopeful [is] I’m doing 100%, giving everything I have to try to make things be right again. And so I’m constantly in contact with people who are doing the same, and people who are making a difference. I’m helping them get elected. I have the Jane Fonda Climate PAC. We’ve elected 250 climate champions.