She was no longer simply playing the recognizable leading-lady roles that had helped establish her.
She was taking chances.
She worked with filmmakers including Noah Baumbach, Paul Schrader and Bernardo Bertolucci.
She moved between mainstream Hollywood productions and projects that were harder to categorize.
And then, quite suddenly, it stopped.
There was no long decline.
No string of public failures.
No dramatic announcement that she was quitting the business.
In 2002, Fonda starred in the television adaptation of The Snow Queen.
The following year, she was preparing to appear in a recurring role on The Practice.
Then her immediate plans changed dramatically.
In early 2003, Fonda was involved in a serious car accident while driving along California’s Pacific Coast Highway.
Her vehicle reportedly lost control, went over an embankment and rolled downhill.
Despite the terrifying nature of the crash, Fonda escaped with relatively minor injuries.
Reports at the time described her survival as remarkably fortunate.
Her planned role on The Practice was subsequently recast.
Later that year, Fonda married composer Danny Elfman.
By late 2004, the couple announced that they were expecting their first child together.
Their son, Oliver, was born in 2005.
And somewhere during that transition, Fonda’s Hollywood career quietly became part of her past.
She did not immediately disappear from every public event.
For several years, she still occasionally attended premieres and industry gatherings.
She was photographed at events connected to The Nightmare Before Christmas, appeared at awards ceremonies and attended other Hollywood functions.
But those appearances gradually became fewer.
By 2009, they had become exceptionally rare.
One of her final major public appearances came at the Los Angeles premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
After that, Bridget Fonda largely vanished from celebrity culture.
That disappearance felt especially striking because her career had not obviously run out of momentum.
Her 2001 action film Kiss of the Dragon, alongside Jet Li, had been commercially successful.
She was still recognizable.
She still had opportunities.
Yet instead of attempting another comeback or searching for the next role, she chose something entirely different.
Private life.
Looking back at old interviews, there were signs that Hollywood may never have felt as comfortable to Fonda as it appeared from the outside.
In 2000, she spoke candidly about struggling with her own expectations.
“What is it with my low self-esteem?” she asked.
She admitted that despite having a career many actors would have envied, she constantly felt she should be accomplishing more.
