"Being Henry Fonda's daughter got me started. But it didn't keep me working." (Jane Fonda)

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

Growing up in the shadow of one of America's most famous actors would be intimidating for anyone, but few have emerged out of that shadow like Jane Fonda, the oldest daughter of screen legend Henry Fonda. In fact, when Jane costarred with her father in the last film he made, On Golden Pond, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for it. However, she has accomplished more than enough in her own career to make her father proud, winning two Academy Awards, an Emmy, and seven Golden Globe Awards herself.

Jane burst onto the scene in the early 1960s, when she was still in her 20s, and when she performed in Sunday in New York, one critic labeled her, "[T]he loveliest and most gifted of all our new, young actresses." She has been acting at least off and on from that point forward, earning critical acclaim both for her acting skills and for many of the movies she appeared in.

However, today many people associate Jane Fonda with political causes, most notoriously her stance against the Vietnam War. Indeed, she might still be the face of the anti-Vietnam movement because of an episode that earned her the notorious nickname Hanoi Jane. In addition to speaking out against the war, Fonda actually traveled to Hanoi in July 1972 and was photographed sitting in a North Vietnamese antiaircraft battery, immediately earning widespread condemnation that sought to brand her as anti-American.