It had been 15 years since two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda (Coming Home) had been seen on the big screen when she made her return to Hollywood in the 2005 romantic comedy Monster-in-Law starring Jennifer Lopez.
In the movie, Fonda plays Lopez’s nemesis – a mother-in-law who tries everything possible to break up a relationship between her son and his fiancée (Lopez).
Fonda, now 84, credits Lopez for helping her make a comeback to an industry she said in a past interview had “become agony” for her. Fonda said Monster-in-Law was the “only smart thing” she had done.
“[Monster-in-Law] was a great comeback for me,” she recently told The Mirror. “I was almost 65 years old when I got this script out of the blue. I thought, ‘People are going to come to the movie to see J.Lo, but they’ll rediscover Fonda,’ and that’s what happened.”
Before Monster-in-Law, Fonda’s last film was the 1990 romance Stanley & Iris, which co-starred two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro (Raging Bull). In a past interview when the film debuted, Fonda said she was worried that Lopez would “be a diva” but soon found out that she was “professional” and “very smart.”
When the film first hit theaters, Lopez said working with Fonda gave her a “glimpse into what it must have been like when movies were different.”
“She worked in a different era where it was more about plays and stories and midnight cowboys and all kinds of stuff,” Lopez said. “She would come very prepared. We would run the gamut of trying all these different things and it was a lot of fun.”