File photoPeter Fonda:
'I'm always being compared
to my father and it's a compliment.'
Catching up with
America’s ‘Easy Rider’
Peter Fonda has a new
By Tim Ryan
image and a new book
Star-BulletinPeter Fonda may be best known for his drug-smuggling character in "Easy Rider" but the 57-year-old actor reinvented himself this year with his role in the acclaimed "Ulee's Gold." Fonda -- who is also known for being Henry Fonda's son, Jane Fonda's brother, and more recently, Bridget Fonda's father -- has been on the road since April, promoting his film.
The Wyoming resident, who in the 1970s kept a sloop docked at Lahaina, is in Hawaii for a brief vacation and to participate in the weekend's third annual Celebrity Sports Invitational that benefits the United States Olympic Committee.
The Star-Bulletin caught up with the actor yesterday for an interview:
Question: Isn't "Ulee's Gold" being touted as the "performance of your career?"
Fonda: I had a better time making this motion picture than I've had doing any motion picture, or any play. It was so beautifully written. (Director) Victor Nunez is brilliant. His narrative directives were just brilliant. He wrote 'Ulee exits the room in a gentle sorrow.' That phrase gives the actor all kinds of places to go. I played it like my character in 'Easy Rider.' Remember I didn't do much on the screen; it was all what I did with my face. When I did talk I said very little. You know, things like "Far out man," "Hey, really beautiful," or "That's grass." "Ulee's" was a part that would show what I could do.
Q: Many people who have seen the film say you reminded them of your father. Did you and Nunez try to accentuate that with the glasses?
Fonda: Never. The glasses were my idea, because they can be a very interesting prop. But we didn't have enough time to think of the glasses as anything but a little punctuation or a lack of it, depending on how they're used. We just knew that this was the right pair. I'm always being compared to my father and it's a compliment. The glasses were my idea, and the only problem with them was that someone put my reading prescription in, which meant that when my character was driving around in the daytime, to me everything looked like a very noir Mary Cassatt painting.
Q: What's your book "Don't Tell Dad" about?
Fonda: It's a tell-the-truth book about my life and sister and father and somewhat my daughter. Our lives have been trivialized by poachers, those people who write a biography about you and don't know stone one about who you are but decide through their own psycho-babble to psychoanalyze the family. When I told Jane about my book, she got worried. Only for a while, though. She didn't know some of these stories. They were amazing and difficult stories of my early childhood. But Jane loved it.
Q: Did you always want to be an actor?
Fonda: No, I wanted to be the Everly Brothers. I wanted both voices to come out of my one mouth. My voice wasn't good enough.
Q: Ever think about coming back to Hawaii?
Fonda: I'm sort of interested in Molokai on the side where you can see Lanai and Maui. I don't know if there's anything left where I could build. I had a lot of fun in Hawaii and probably had the most beautiful wooden boat there. Even today I get a lot of stewardesses telling me on a flight that they were on my boat but their name back then was like "Summer Wind." Hell if I can remember.
Celebrity Sports
Invitational DinnerFeaturing: Cazimero Brothers concert, preview of Faberge's St. Petersburg Collection, celebrity auction
