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Jane Fonda became emotional at an Atlanta charity event while discussing her and her ex-husband Ted Turner’s support for the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential (GCAPP).
Fonda, 87, appeared at GCAPP’s 30th annual EmPower Party and gala event on Thursday, Nov. 13. She and her ex Turner, 86, who were married from 1991 to 2001, are co-founders of the Georgia-based charity, which works to “improve the overall health and well-being of young people” in the state, per the organization’s website.
When Fonda spoke to the assembled audience, the two-time Academy Award winner said that the charity’s three decades of success “never would have happened if it wasn’t for Ted.”
“It was a very challenging time in Georgia. Had I not been with Ted, this was something, had he not stood by me with his love and support, we never would have survived,” Fonda told the crowd, as she grew emotional. “Ted’s not here, but he is here in my heart and I know he is here in a lot of our hearts.”
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Fonda helped co-found GCAPP in 1995, according to the organization’s website. Turner grew up in Georgia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted in a Nov. 11 article on Fonda’s work with the charity that she and Turner lived in Atlanta during the majority of their marriage in the 1990s.
An official website for the Nov. 13 event noted that the gala would honor GCAPP’s top 30 supporters over the last 30 years and legacy award recipients. Though Turner was not at the gala, he was named among those recipients, which also included Edwina Johnson and Tom Johnson, as well as Sarah Kennedy and Jim Kennedy.
The 9 to 5 star’s marriage to Turner was her third. Fonda was first married to French filmmaker Roger Vadim from 1965 to 1973; they share daughter Vanessa, 57. Fonda was married to activist Tom Hayden from 1973 to 1990 — with whom she shares son Troy Garity, 52 — before she wed Turner, the founder of CNN, in 1991. (Fonda is also a mom to daughter Mary Luana Williams, 58, whom she adopted when Williams was a child.)
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Fonda told PEOPLE in a 2023 interview that she still found her ex-husband Turner “outrageous and hysterically funny,” more than two decades after they divorced.
“You have to understand nobody is perfect,” she said of relationships at the time. “And you have to decide: Can I live with this? Can we work with each other on this, or is this a deal-breaker?”
