Henry Fonda  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905August 12, 1982) was an iconic, highly acclaimed Academy Award-winning American film and stage actor, best known for his roles as plain-speaking idealists. Fonda's subtle, naturalistic acting style preceded by many years the popularization of Method acting.

Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor, and made his Hollywood debut in 1935. Fonda's career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in 1940s The Grapes of Wrath, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts, and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved toward both more challenging, darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (portraying a villain who kills, among others, a child and a cripple) and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball.

He was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity; his family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Henry Fonda" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools