Jane Fonda has posted a lengthy and emotional Instagram remembrance of her ex-husband Ted Turner, who died Wednesday at 87.
“I loved Ted with all my heart,” she writes. See the entire statement below.
Introducing the statement as “My immediate thoughts about Ted,” Fonda writes, “He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same. He needed me.”
Fonda says Turner was the most competitive person she ever met “next to Katharine Hepburn.”
Last week in Hollywood while attending the 2026 TCM Classic Film Festival, Fonda told longtime TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, “My favorite ex-husband created Turner Classic Movies — that was Ted Turner. On our very first date, he talked to me all about Turner Classic Movies, and I do think it was one of the great things he did.”
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Mankiewicz then asked the two-time Oscar winner, “In this world we live in today, why do we need TCM now?” (Watch that clip below.)
Fonda thought for a long moment before replying, “We need to know what it used to be like. We need to know what the greats were like — the great directors, the great actresses, the great actors. We want to see how people used to behave.”
She added: “I know a young girl who came from a very, very disadvantaged background, and she learned manners and how to behave from TCM.”
Fonda and Turner were married from 1991-2001 but remained friends in the ensuing decades.
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The full post reads: