At a special event marking the 40th(ish) anniversary of Klute, the 1971 thriller for which she won her first Academy Award, actress Jane Fonda revealed how close she came to not playing the iconic role of Bree the call girl. She confessed, “”After spending a week with prostitutes, I said, ‘I can’t do it. Hire Faye Dunaway. I can’t do it,'” she said. “Then I figured out a way to get into it. I became who [Bree] was and just let it happen.” Her biggest lesson from the film? The importance of self-awareness. “The more you know yourself in context with the world, the better you are able to act.”
During the first part of the event, which took place at the Darby in New York City on Oct. 11, Bravo host Andy Cohen played a few clips from the film and Fonda provided commentary. Afterward, comedian Sandra Bernhard hosted an auction; among the lots, the film’s iconic trench coat sold for $1,000. A total of $50,000 was raised for a nonprofit organization close to Fonda’s heart: the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP).
