Turner: 'Faith not behind Fonda split'
Religion is not to blame for Jane Fonda’s marriage split with Ted Turner, the media mogul says in a new book.
Turner said he was “upset” when he discovered his wife’s “conversion,” but “it wasn’t because she had become Christian”, the 69-year-old Turner wrote in 'Call Me Ted' which comes out next week.
He was upset because Fonda didn’t talk to him about it.
Fonda wrote at length about her marriage to Turner in her memoir 'My Life So Far', and Turner adds a similar take without referring to the infidelities alleged against him by the Academy Award-winning actress. The two say they remain good friends.
He remembers their impulsive courtship, beginning in 1990 with his learning of her divorce from activist Tom Hayden and immediately calling her, a virtual stranger, for a date. She declined. He persisted. Six months later she accepted. They married in 1991.
They cared deeply about each other but spent so much time apart that they had “trouble communicating” even when together; not even therapy could save the marriage, with Fonda’s faith cited at the time as a possible cause for their divorce.
Turner remembered going back to their Montana ranch for the first time after their split and seeing that Fonda had taken all her belongings.
“Our closets faced each other’s, and when I saw her empty space I sat down on the floor between them and cried,” writes Turner, who had two previous wives.
