NEW YORK (AP) -- The ground rules are less than promising: no acting questions, no personal questions and, if you value your life, no mention of Vietnam. Today, Jane Fonda has just one item on her agenda.

"As you know, Jane will only talk about fitness," a representative of her video distributor says cheerfully on the elevator ride up to Fonda's hotel suite. "But if she feels relaxed, she might open about other subjects. You might get her to talk about Ted and fishing."

Fighting back images of Ted Turner cleaning a rainbow trout, we get off at the 36th floor and are greeted at the door by Fonda, who shakes hands and briefly excuses herself to finish another interview. She seems rushed-later this morning she is to help her son, Troy, move in to his apartment. But she's upbeat, friendly.

A few minutes later, Fonda settles into a small armchair and rests her legs on a glass coffee table. She is wearing a black, buttoned blouse and gray pants. Her auburn hair falls to her shoulders; her fingers are long and slender. Her feet are bare; her toenails painted red.

Fonda is 55, but the magic number today is 10 million, as in total video sales since she kicked off – literally – the video exercise boom in 1982. There also have been eight audiotapes, total sales of more than 2 million, and a best-selling workout book.

New product is being developed all the time, with three new tapes coming out this fall: "Jane Fonda's Pregnancy Workout," "Jane Fonda's Start Up" and "Jane Fonda's Favorite Fat Burners," a compilation of four previous workouts.

"A lot of it has to do with my need to create boundaries," Fonda says of her motivation behind exercising. "I tend to be like a lot of women – someone who forgets myself. . . . And I'll find myself lost somewhere out there, trying to please everyone. Exercise helps me define myself."

This leads, oh so gently, to acting, which Fonda says had the effect of making her lose touch with herself. The intensity she brought to her work caused "mini-breakdowns" before each film began. It may have been the reason she finally gave it up.

"It was like, you're not quite the character yet, but you're not yourself fully, anymore," she says of the weeks leading up to filming. "It was horrible; it was always absolutely horrible. I would hate myself. . . .

"And when the movie would be over – abject sadness and melancholy, just horrible depression. I think that's true for many actors. You live for someone else and in between, it's like, 'Who am I?' . . . Before I met Ted and decided I didn't want to act anymore, I was already not wanting to act anymore."

These days, her heart clearly is in physical fitness. She describes the months-long process involved with constructing the workouts, the give and take over music and sets and exercises. It recalls the development of a feature film.

The videos – and fitness in general – have been an education for Fonda. Her first tape was criticized for having a routine so intense it was potentially dangerous. Earlier this year, she confessed to Family Circle magazine she was once hooked on exercise, working out four hours a day.

"I'm a pretty compulsive kind of person," she says, "and for a long time I suffered from eating disorders. Exercising helped me to recover from that, but not all by itself. I had to teach myself balance and moderation that didn't come to me naturally."

Fonda admits that 20 years ago she never thought she'd be living like this: workout tapes, retired from acting, the adoring wife of a wealthy businessman. She is as likely to be seen rooting on the Atlanta Braves as she is to be marching in a political rally. Young fans of her videos might find it hard to imagine that' the friendly instructor chanting "work those thighs" once had her address book Xeroxed by government agents.

"I don't call it conservative," she says of her current politics. "I've gotten smarter, I've gotten more compassionate. I've gotten less impatient. I have learned through bitter experience that ~ life is not simple, black and white and, all that.

"The fact is there's nothing wrong when you're young and seeing things in black and white. If they don't do it, who will? Somebody has to man the barricades – that’s a function of youth, the pure idealism and the willingness to die for your ideals."

She was supposed to talk about fitness, but the past proves irresistible, like chocolate cake waved under her nose. Fonda notes her most challenging roles often were related to the times in which the films were made. There was "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" It was released in 1969, just as she was becoming politicized about Vietnam. Two years later came "Klute," bringing Fonda an Academy Award and her first feminist education.

"I had just done 'Barbarella,' and it was not politically correct and I was worried about it. . . . So here I was supposed to be playing this hooker and I didn't know how to do it in a way to get respect, and then I just started getting into her," she recalls.

"Something in my heart as Bree Daniel opened up to other women, that's what led to the scene . . . where I'm finally with the guy when he puts the tape recorder down and he starts to play it, and I can hear the voice of the girlfriend who has been killed, and I realized this is the guy and he's going to kill me.

"I spent weeks with hookers and call girls and streetwalkers and I had gone through the morgue and had looked through the pictures and when I heard the tape, I cried one tear and my nose started running. It was totally unprepared, but it was a heart opening to the women who had been the victims of violence. That to me is like the first concrete example of how politics is really about conscience and expanded con- science so you can view people with more empathy."

Still, she hardly sounds like an alumna of Nixon's Enemies List when asked how she reconciles her personal wealth with her political ideals: "If you feel bad about making money, stop making money, for heaven's sake. I LOVE making money."

Fonda says at first she didn't want to make the videos, fearing they'd hurt her acting career. But she changed her mind after receiving letters from women of all ages thanking her for giving them confidence, even for saving their lives.

This leads to another question: Don't men work out to her videos?

"Men don't do 'em," she answers firmly. "I did a video, just a draft of a video. I decided to do an aerobic video based on all the moves guys do in high school, dribbling, all sports related."

But a marketing test revealed that the men wouldn't be interested in pursuing it.

"They felt stupid, putting videos on and having their kids and their wives there," Fonda said. "Your culture is working out at a gym. It's sports, team sports. It's not our culture, for the most part. It's more natural for us to do that; we're at home, anyway."

Women are at home, anyway?

"A lot of women who do the tape are at home with their children and the children do the tapes with them."

Don't men stay at home with the children?

"I'm not saying they don't, but men just don't do videos.”

What about Turner?

"He works out in a gym and I work out in a gym, and together we bike ride and we hike and we ski and go for walks and things like that. He's happy enough that I'm continuing to do the videos – I don't have to ask for money," she says with a laugh.

But does he do videos?

"He might do the one I'm going to do in a month or so, but up to now, no. He wouldn't do an aerobics video, it's not his thing."

She pauses and smiles, blushing slightly.

"He likes to look at 'em sometimes; he likes to look at the covers."