star; his mother was an emotionally fragile socialite. His parents’ marriage was always rocky, and Fonda’s
mother died in 1950. At first, he and his sister, who is two years older, were told she had a heart attack.
They learned a few years later that she had taken her own life.
In 1951, soon after Henry Fonda remarried, 11-year-old Peter was seriously wounded when he shot himself
with a pistol, an incident Fonda always said was an accident, not a suicide attempt.
During his rebellious teen years, he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in his father’s hometown of
Omaha, where he attended what is now the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He acted in local stage
productions, then made his Broadway debut in 1961. He appeared in his first film, Tammy and the Doctor, in
1963.
Throughout the 1960s, Fonda cultivated a reputation as a drug-using rebel, smoking marijuana, taking LSD
and befriending rock musicians. He wrote about his wild years, marked by numerous affairs and his distant
relationship with his father, in a 1998 autobiography, Don’t Tell Dad. He and his father became close in the
years before Henry Fonda’s death in 1982.
Fonda was cast against type in ‘Ulees’s Gold’
(1997) to great success (Rex)After the success of Ulee’s Gold, Fonda had a remarkable Hollywood resurgence as a character actor, playing
dozens of roles, most notably as an amoral record producer in The Limey (1999) and in the 2007 western
3:10 to Yuma. He completed several films that have not yet been released.
In time, Fonda became reconciled to his talent, his heritage and his place in Hollywood history. “I’m not
chasing fame,” he said in 1997. “I was born famous. If I were digging ditches today, the guys at the other
end of the ditch would say: ‘You know who that is? That’s Jane Fonda’s brother.’ Or Henry Fonda’s son. No
matter what, I’ll never escape that.”
Fonda’s first two marriages, to Susan Brewer and Rebecca “Becky” Crockett McGuane, ended in divorce.
He is survived by his third wife Margaret DeVogelaere and two children from his first marriage.
Peter Fonda, actor, born 23 February 1940, died 16 August 2019
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