The director later explained that he believed there was a “wild, cunning side” to Fonda that had not yet been fully explored on screen.
The role allowed her to reveal precisely that.
A year later, A Simple Plan pushed her even further.
Playing Sarah Mitchell, a pregnant woman whose morality becomes increasingly compromised as money and desperation take over, Fonda delivered one of the darkest performances of her career.
By the late 1990s, her work seemed to be becoming more interesting rather than less.
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.
