Fonda, Turner Separate
After eight years of marriage, media magnate Ted Turner and two-time Academy Award winner Jane Fonda said Tuesday they are separating because they need some time apart.
"While we continue to be committed to the long-term success of our marriage, we find ourselves at a juncture where we must each take some personal time for ourselves," they said in a statement. "Therefore, we have mutually decided to spend some time apart. We ask that you respect this decision."
Miss Fonda, 62, and Turner, 61, celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary on Dec. 21.
Spokesmen for the couple, who live in an apartment atop CNN Center but have other residences as well, had no other comment.
Miss Fonda, who won best actress for the 1971 Klute and the 1978 release Coming Home, once said she had given up acting because she wanted to spend as much time as possible with Turner.
"I can't imagine any movie that I ever made or could make in the future that would be worth giving up three months of being with Ted," Miss Fonda said in an interview aired on ABC's PrimeTime Live in 1995.
The two announced their engagement on Dec. 7, 1990, when Miss Fonda displayed a diamond and opal ring. They were wed on Miss Fonda's 54th birthday before about 30 family members and friends at Turner's 8,100-acre Avalon Plantation about 20 miles east of Tallahassee, Fla. Miss Fonda wrote the couple's vows.
The marriage was the third for both Miss Fonda and Turner. He has five children from previous marriages, while she has two.
Turner founded CNN and owns the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks. He created CNN in 1980 as part of his Turner Broadcasting System Inc. empire. TBS was swallowed by Time Warner Inc. in 1996 in a $7.57 billion merger, and Turner is now a vice chairman of Time Warner.
In 1998, he established the United Nations Foundation after pledging to give $1 billion over 10 years to U.N. projects that benefit the environment and women and children's health.
Last year, Turner said he had considered running for president but decided not do so because Miss Fonda wouldn't let him.
"I thought about it a number of times," Turner said in May. "But my wife, who was married to a politician before, said she would leave me."
Miss Fonda, an antiwar activist during the Vietnam War, was married to Tom Hayden, a '60s radical and state senator in California. Her first husband was director Roger Vadim.