Jane Fonda

With her patrician looks and Hollywood pedigree, it would have been easy for Jane Fonda to coast through life. Instead, she cast herself against type, using her classic beauty and detached sexiness in deliberately off-kilter roles like the future-worldly sex-kitten Barbarella and the cynical—if extremely well-coiffed—prostitute Bree Daniels in Klute. She did the same in her personal life, where her anti-Vietnam War activities put her at the center of a political firestorm in the early ý70s. Fonda's idiosyncratic evolution, ten years later, into the first aerobics guru to the masses, only reiterated her dedication to following her own, individual path.

—Janet Ozzard