Jane Fonda's view of life from high above Hollywood is pretty good these days.

The fan mail never stops, and no wonder . . . Jane Fonda hasn't stopped, either.

At 74 she can still rock the red carpet. In Cannes last month, she stole the show - something that surprises even herself.

"Listen, I didn't think I'd live past 30. I mean, it's all a surprise to me," she said.

She's busier than ever, with movies and TV series in the works, including the upcoming HBO drama, "The Newsroom," where she'll play a hard-nosed network executive.

What Fonda calls her Third and Final Act is turning out to be a busy one.

"All of us - you know, probably you, too - were brought up with this view of life like an arc," she told Cowan. "You're born, you peak at midlife, then you decline into decrepitude. You know, it's a downward slope. You're 'over the hill.' And I realized, yeah, I'm over the hill, but look at all these other hills - no one told me there were gonna be all these hills!

"And I can climb them!"

Her latest movie opens this week - a role that, to some, may not seem like too much of a stretch. Her character - an aging, pot-smoking, one-time flower child - tries to help her up-tight lawyer daughter move on after a divorce.

"I'm so tired of movies that don't make me feel good. And it's a feel-good movie!" Fonda said.

It's fitting perhaps that the film's title is "Peace, Love and Misunderstanding" - because that's a pretty apt description of Jane Fonda's long and varied life.