Jane Fonda is remembering her friend and collaborator, Richard Simmons, after his death.
On Sunday, the legendary actress, 86, memorialized Simmons, one day after it was confirmed that the beloved fitness instructor and instrument figure of the video workout movement had died.
In an Instagram post shared with her more than 2 million followers, the Hollywood icon and political activist paid tribute to Simmons, who died on Saturday at the age of 76. Fonda sweetly attached a picture of her and Simmons from a more recent interaction.
“Richard Simmons always wanted people to feel good and be happy. He would go out of his way to make people happy. I often wondered if maybe nobody had made him happy when he was a little boy,” Fonda began her lengthy tribute.
The Grace and Frankie star continued, “He was generous. He gave of himself, of his time, to make people happy. He once popped out of a huge cake at the launch of some Jane Fonda WORKOUT event. That was generous.”
“He found out I was in a store where he was so he quickly bought some small trinket and ran across the store, shouting at the top of his lungs in that unmistakable voice, to let me know he was coming. That was generous,” she wrote.
Fonda acknowledged their decades-long history and looked back on the last time she saw the workout guru. According to the actress, she is now in the camp of his millions of fans who mourn his loss and remember him fondly.
“I saw him last when I took him and a boyfriend of his to lunch at the Polo Lounge. The relationship was new and he was proud. I never saw or heard from him again and, like many thousands of others, I’ve mourned his absence from my life,” she wrote.
Back in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fonda and Simmons actually teamed up to help people stuck inside for quarantine get a workout in as they launched an online workout series. The pair previously collaborated on workout videos throughout their fitness instructor careers.
Concluding her post, Fonda referenced their longtime relationship and sent him off with well-wishes, thanking him for his years of friendship.
She concluded, “I hope he felt the love so many were sending him these last years. I hope it made him happy. I read he died peacefully in his sleep in his very white home. Rest in Peace, Dear Richard.”
After his death, Simmons was on the receiving end of tributes from other friends and influential figures, including Pauly Shore — who will play Simmons in an upcoming biopic. While the pair were at odds over the film, Shore, 56, still paid tribute to Simmons.
“I just got word like everyone else that the beautiful Richard Simmons has passed. I hope you’re at peace and twinkling up in the heavens,” he wrote in a post that featured a photo of Simmons. “Please give my mother Mitzi and my father Sammy a big hug and kiss for me. You’re one of a kind, Richard. An amazing life. An amazing story. They broke the dolphin shorts when they made you. Rest in peace, my friend. Rest in peace.”
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