A role where Jane Fonda can get risque

But moviegoers with long memories will also recall “Barefoot in the Park,” “California Suite,” and “9 to 5.” So it’s a surprise to hear that Fonda was challenged by the improvisational skills of her costars Jason Bateman and Tina Fey in the new dramedy “This Is Where I Leave You.” In fact, she says that personal and professional risk was the reason she auditioned for the role of matriarch Hillary Altman.

“I love the fact that at my advanced age, I can be in a situation where it was a steep learning curve and I’m surrounded by all these young kids with amazing talent. Why not? That’s what keeps you young,” says Fonda, 76, during an interview at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

In the Shawn Levy-directed film based on the bestseller by Jonathan Tropper, Hillary is the famous author of a tell-all tome who gathers her four adult children (played by Bateman, Fey, Adam Driver, and Corey Stoll) to sit shiva (the Jewish period of mourning) for their father. The act triggers family dysfunction, Hollywood-style. Was the classy Fonda concerned that bawdy jokes about Hillary’s surgicall enhanced breasts and sex life were a far cry from the urbane banter of Neil Simon?

“That’s what made it funny. I identify with her,” the actress explains. “You can ask my children, my son in particular: I have a tendency to over-share. Sometimes he has to take me aside (‘Mom, T.M.I’). . . . I wanted the experience of working with not just Tina and Jason but also Adam Driver, who I think is the next big male star. I think he’s the next De Niro. I improvised a lot of ‘Coming Home’ but comedy is different. It was jaw-dropping for me to be around these incredibly experienced and gifted comedians who can improvise and be funny.”

Her awe went beyond her days on set. Fonda asked Ben Schwartz, who also appears in the film, if she could join a performance of his Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles once the movie wrapped. “It was six guys and me on the stage. It was hard! It did not come natural to me,” Fonda admits. “I learned that improvising comedy is not my forte.”

Fonda’s gamesmanship impressed screenwriter Tropper, who adapted his own novel.

“Jane has real presence; she’s an icon and yet she speaks her mind, there’s no sense of her holding back in life or on screen,” Tropper says. “The kids tend to shrink in Hillary’s presence. You can’t hide from her in her house; she’s going to find you, literally and metaphorically, so you need someone commanding in that role. What I loved about Jane is that for someone at her level, she approached [the comedy] with both humility and total fearlessness.”

Fonda this past summer shot “The Early Years,” director Paolo Sorrentino’s upcoming film set in Switzerland, which she stars in (“I play an 81-year-old Hollywood diva”) alongside Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz, and Harvey Keitel. Next, Fonda reteams with her friend and “9 to 5” castmate Lily Tomlin in the original Netflix comedy series “Grace and Frankie” from “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman, set to debut in the spring.

“I’m having a blast. Plus, having a steady job, boy, does that feel good,” Fonda says. “When I started out, you didn’t do TV. That was a death knell to a movie actor. But now you go back and forth and often the best writing is in television and older women have a friendly home on TV.”

Looking back on her storied career, would she want to revisit any of her iconic roles?

“I always wanted to do a sequel to ‘Barefoot in the Park,’ me and Redford as older versions of those people. Neil Simon was not prepared to do it and who could ever write like him? So it never happened. Another one I’d like to do a sequel to — but it will probably never happen — is ‘Barbarella.’ I have this whole fantasy that I’m old Barbarella and I have a baby . . . who stays behind on the evil planet and I have to go back with an army of women to rescue my daughter.”

Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.