Jane Fonda knows what she wants—and what she doesn't.
When it comes to a partner, the actress, 83, is often drawn to men who lead lives dissimilar to her own. "Part of the reason I get into a relationship with a man is because I feel that he can take me down a new path," she explained in the April issue of Harper's Bazaar. "I'm attracted to people who can teach me things and whose lives are different from mine, and so I give myself over to that. First of all, I want to please him. That's a problem."
Take, for example, her relationship with Ted Turner, who she wed following her failed romances with Roger Vadim and Tom Hayden. The two split in 2001.
"Marrying Ted is like marrying 15 people—you have to learn how to hunt, so I did. You have to learn how to fly-fish, so I did. He liked me to dress sexy, so I did. And so forth. I wanted to," she said. "Why be with Ted Turner if you're not going to allow yourself to be absorbed in his reality and learn from it? And I'm glad I did."
Today, however, her definition of intimacy has changed. "I'll be truthful," the single star admitted. "One of the painful things that I've realized by 80...is that I'm not really capable [of intimacy]. It's not them. It's me. If a guy had come along and said, 'Come on, Fonda, show up,' I would have run away scared. I was attracted to men who never would have done that to me because they couldn't necessarily show up themselves. I didn't know that at the time, but now I know. I don't think I can do anything about it now, but that's the truth."
So how does that impact the future of her romantic life? Well..."I don't want to be in a relationship, a sexual relationship, again. I don't have that desire," she revealed. "Do I fantasize? Yes, here's my fantasy. I'll just put it out there. That I meet a professor or a researcher, somebody in that line who is really capable of loving, of cherishing a woman, so that I could test myself and see if I could show up."
And, these days, that man in her dreams is not in her age demo. "The problem is that, like a man, I would want a younger man," Fonda said. "Isn't that awful? It's a thing about skin. I would want a younger man, and I'm too vain."
But hey, she has every right to be.