Jane Fonda Remembers Ex-Husband Ted Turner: ‘I Loved Him With All My Heart’

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Hours after news broke that Ted Turner died, actress Jane Fonda — who was married to the media mogul behind CNN, TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies from 1991 to 2001 — looked back at their life together in a moving Instagram post. “To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative,” she wrote. “Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I believe.”

Fonda and Turner were one of the great power couples of the Nineties, and even though their marriage ended in acrimony, they remained on very good terms. She lovingly referred to him as her “favorite ex-husband.” 

“[With Ted] there were lovemaking times when we’d lock eyes and melt into one,” she wrote in her 2005 memoir My Life So Far. “There were times when something would set us to laughing so hard we’d sink to the floor, like the night when our guffaws collapsed us at the foot of the Gone With the Wind staircase at his plantation and we had to crawl up to bed on hands and knees.”

In her post on Wednesday, she detailed his accomplishments beyond being a media mogul, mentioning that he had won the America’s Cup “as the world’s greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor,” she wrote.

She added that she learned many things from him, including “about nature and wildlife, hunting and fishing (hunters and fishermen who follow the law are the best environmentalists), but also about business and strategy.

“Ted was supremely strategic. It was likely innate, but he studied the Classics in college, knew about the Peleponesian War inside and out and the strategies used by Alexander the Great and even Genghis Khan,” she said. “And sailing big boats as he did further honed those strategic talents which he then brought into his businesses to much success. He could see around corners for sure.”

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Fonda noted Turner was also fiercely competitive, saying that it was “fascinating to witness.” “Ted was challenging, but I’ve always been up for a challenge, and with Ted it was almost always worth it,” she said.

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