Jane Fonda calls Marlon Brando ‘disappointing’ and says she regrets never sleeping with Marvin Gaye

Jane Fonda called legendary heartthrob Marlon Brando ‘disappointing’ as she reflected on her early days in Hollywood and her brand new book in a new profile for the New York Times.

Fonda, 82, dished dirt during a quick round of ‘Confirm or Deny’ questions, where she told reporter Maureen Dowd she wasn’t exactly charmed by the Wild One talent, who was her co-star in the 1966 drama The Chase.

While she said her experience with Brando was lackluster, the actress/activist admitted she wishes she got closer to another star, telling the NYT she regrets never hooking up with late crooner Marvin Gaye.’

Asked for her take on Brando, Fonda simply said: ‘Disappointing…’ but she did give him credit for being ‘a great actor.’ 

One of Dowd’s cheekier questions asked Fonda whether her ‘greatest regret is that you never had sex with Che Guevara.’

But it wasn’t the Cuban revolutionary who left a lasting impression. 

‘No, I don’t think about him,’ Jane said. ‘Who I do think about, and what is a great regret is Marvin Gaye. He wanted to and I didn’t. I was married to Tom [Hayden].’

Fonda was wed to the left-wing activist/politician for 17 years, married in 1973. Hayden passed away in 2016. They two shared 47-year-old son Troy Garity. 

Jane explained how she actually met the Let’s Get It On singer while recruiting performers to do benefit concerts for her late ex. 

‘I was meeting a lot of performers to try to do concerts for Tom and the woman who was helping me do that introduced me to Marvin Gaye,’ she said.

Tickled at the thought of a Fonda/Gaye fling, Dowd joked: ‘Please tell me his pickup line included the words ‘sexual healing.”

Jane admitted while that would have been nice, she turned down his offer.

‘I needed some but he didn’t say that, no,’ Fonda went on. ‘But then I read, apparently he had my picture on his refrigerator. I didn’t find that out until later, after he was dead.’

Gaye died in 1984 after being shot  by his father at their LA home.

Interestingly, Brando and Gaye are rumored to have had slept together. 

In 2018 Quincy Jones told Vulture about Marlon’s voracious appetite for sex, dishing: ‘Brando would fuck anything. Anything!He’d fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye.’

Gaye’s son denied the rumors, saying: ‘We didn’t really think too much about it because we know the facts. My dad was a ladies man. Everybody loved my dad but my dad didn’t have anything against homosexuals. He was about love. I think he would have laughed it off personally.’

Back in 2018 Fonda told People she spent decades ‘defined by the men in [her] life,’ until becoming single in her 60s. 

‘Up until my sixties, I was to an extent, defined by the men in my life. I was brought up to please,’ she said. 

‘I wanted my father to love me so I would turn myself into a pretzel to be what he wanted me to be, not necessarily what I already was.’ 

‘It took me getting into my sixties, and then I began to become who I was supposed to be all along.’

Fonda’s new book What Can I Do? My Path From Climate Despair To Action is out September 8th.