Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda was born in New York City, the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw. Fonda’s surname originates from Dutch ancestry; she is also of English, Scottish, and Italian descent.[1][2][3] She was named after the third wife of English king Henry VIII, Lady Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother’s side.[4] Her brother, Peter Fonda (born 1940), and his daughter Bridget Fonda, also are actors. Fonda had a maternal half-sister, Frances, who died in 2008.[5] In 1950, when Fonda was 12, her mother committed suicide while under treatment at a psychiatric hospital.[6] Later that year Fonda’s father married socialite Susan Blanchard (born 1928), nine years his daughter’s senior; this marriage would end in divorce.
