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Jane Fonda is reflecting on the painful reality of losing her Hollywood peers, including Gene Hackman, Robert Redford and Diane Keaton.
“It’s been a tough year,” Fonda, 87, told PEOPLE at the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power’s 30th Anniversary EmPower Party on Thursday, Nov. 13.
Asked about Hackman — who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1972 for The French Connection, the same year Fonda won Best Actress for Klute — the star says, “You know, there’s him and Redford.”
“He came down here to support GCAPP. And we screened Barefoot in the Park,” she said, referencing the 1967 romantic drama she and Redford made.
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“And Diane Keaton — I just finished working with her,” continued Fonda, who last starred with Keaton in 2023’s Book Club: The Next Chapter. “Boy, I was shocked. Really shocked. You get to be old and everybody is dying around you.”
Keaton died in California on Oct. 11 at age 79. Her cause of death was later revealed to be pneumonia.
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Redford passed away a few weeks earlier on Sept. 16 at his home in Utah. His cause of death has not been revealed.
After news of Redford’s death broke, Fonda spoke out in an emotional statement. “It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone. I can’t stop crying. He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for,” she said.
Fonda and Redford worked on many projects together over six decades: 1960’s Tall Story, 1966’s The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, 1979’s The Electric Horseman and 2017’s Our Souls at Night.
In a 2008 interview with PEOPLE, Fonda recalled working with Redford: “He is so handsome and just such a wonderful human being… Every movie I made with him, I developed a crush on him.”
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Hackman’s body was found at his home in New Mexico on Feb. 26. He was 95. His wife of more than 30 years, Betsy, 65, was also found dead. An autopsy later found that Betsy died of hantavirus days before Gene died of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Alzheimer’s disease was also listed as a contributing factor.
Fonda co-founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential with ex-husband Ted Turner in 1995 when they lived in Atlanta.
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According to its website, GCAPP “is a statewide adolescent health organization that works with hundreds of schools and other youth-serving organizations so that young people have the information, knowledge and motivation they need to make healthy lifestyle choices that maximize their potential.”
At the event, Fonda told PEOPLE, “We have become the go-to organization in Georgia when it comes to adolescents, and I feel very proud of that.”
