"He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same," Fonda wrote in a moving message on Instagram

Hours after news broke that Ted Turner died, actress Jane Fonda — who was married to the media mogul behind CNN, TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies from 1991 to 2001 — looked back at their life together in a moving Instagram post. “To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative,” she wrote. “Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I believe.”

Fonda and Turner were one of the great power couples of the Nineties, and even though their marriage ended in acrimony, they remained on very good terms. She lovingly referred to him as her “favorite ex-husband.” 

“[With Ted] there were lovemaking times when we’d lock eyes and melt into one,” she wrote in her 2005 memoir My Life So Far. “There were times when something would set us to laughing so hard we’d sink to the floor, like the night when our guffaws collapsed us at the foot of the Gone With the Wind staircase at his plantation and we had to crawl up to bed on hands and knees.”

In her post on Wednesday, she detailed his accomplishments beyond being a media mogul, mentioning that he had won the America’s Cup “as the world’s greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor,” she wrote.

She added that she learned many things from him, including “about nature and wildlife, hunting and fishing (hunters and fishermen who follow the law are the best environmentalists), but also about business and strategy.

“Ted was supremely strategic. It was likely innate, but he studied the Classics in college, knew about the Peleponesian War inside and out and the strategies used by Alexander the Great and even Genghis Khan,” she said. “And sailing big boats as he did further honed those strategic talents which he then brought into his businesses to much success. He could see around corners for sure.”

Fonda noted Turner was also fiercely competitive, saying that it was “fascinating to witness.” “Ted was challenging, but I’ve always been up for a challenge, and with Ted it was almost always worth it,” she said.

“I loved Ted with all my heart. I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped bring back from extinction — the black footed ferrets, the prairie dogs, Big Horned sheep, Mexican Gray Wolf, the Yellowstone wolf pack, bison, the red cockaded woodpecker and so many more, they’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species.

“Five children survive him, five talented, complex kids who I had the privilege of becoming stepmother to. I had four stepmothers growing up and I know how important stepmothers can be, so we all did our best to build an extended, rag tag family, and I love them to this day,” she concluded. “If it was complicated to be married to him, think how complicated it was being his child. And they are all doing fine. Rest in Peace, dearest Ted. You are loved and you will be remembered.”