To many, Jane Fonda is a golden girl of Hollywood, but to others she will forever be branded as ‘Hanoi Jane’ and spoken of as a traitor who betrayed her country during the Vietnam War.

The hatred which still lives on in veterans today was sparked by a photograph of her sat astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, laughing with locals on a trip to Hanoi in 1972.

The Barbarella actress has since said she would ‘go to her grave’ regretting it as the ‘most horrible thing’ she could have done, but a cursory online search will reveal websites still exist dedicated to discrediting her.

Now more than 40 years later the truth behind the photograph and the shockwaves it created will be revealed in a new play starring another glamorous Hollywood actress, Anne Archer, famed for her Golden Globe-winning role in Fatal Attraction.

The Trial of Jane Fonda has been written by Anne’s husband, Emmy Award-winning director and producer Terry Jastrow, who retraced Fonda’s steps to Hanoi to talk to her guides and veterans of the conflict, in an attempt to reconcile the differing accounts of what happened.

“He started doing research on a film and came across some interesting information about Jane Fonda,“ says Anne, while taking a break from rehearsals in Pimlico.

“He discovered some truths and untruths about what had been said and became interested in the way things have been forwarded again and again online.

“So he went to Hanoi and spoke to people from the war and wrote a screenplay. But then he realised it would probably work better as a play first, like 12 Angry Men or Frost/Nixon.”

The Hollywood couple have eschewed a glittering LA opening and instead the 80-minute drama will have its world premiere above a Highgate pub next week, with a cast of English actors treading the boards alongside Anne at fringe theatre venue Upstairs at The Gatehouse before heading up to the Edinburgh Festival.

Unsurprisingly Fonda was not a supporter of the project, says Anne.

“I have met her although I don’t know her well. My husband has spent a lot of time with her. She tried to talk him out of doing it but she couldn’t so she gave him her side of the story.

“She hasn’t read or seen the play though and probably won’t. She said it would be worse for her as it stirs up memories.

“Terry felt the story was bigger than her and is about war and the actions of citizens and the manipulation of people and the rights of people to say how they feel.”

The play focuses on a little-known event which occurred in Waterbury, Connecticut on June 18, 1988, where Fonda met with a room full of 26 hostile war veterans intent on disrupting the filming of her movie Stanley & Iris, co-starring Robert de Niro.

They confronted her over her vocal opposition to the Vietnam War, including her visit to Hanoi, during which she made radio broadcasts denouncing the US use of antipersonnel bombs as a war crime.

Anne says the play gives the audience the chance to decide if Jane is a peace activist or traitor.

“The play is about that meeting. She tells her story and they tell theirs and how they feel about her and their personal experiences of the war. They each get a chance to be heard and we tell both sides of the story and it’s a battle every night and I don’t know if I’m going to win or lose.”

At 66, Anne is ten years younger than Fonda, now 76, who was in her 30s when she was protesting the war.

“I was against the Vietnam War as 70 per cent of America were,” recalls Anne, “so I agreed with the protests, although I never participated in them.

“I thought she was a little radical. I believed in what she was asking but wanted her to do it better. She was very militant at that time and I didn’t respond to that.

“But I think she had amazing guts and she had an impact without question and that’s the story the play tells.”

The Patriot Games actress says she does not feel nervous portraying her world-famous peer who she describes as “very honest and very driven and an intense person” but adds: “It’s definitely harder because she is in the public eye but she is a bit older than me and I’m playing her in her 50s.

“I have a similar heart to her about huFatal Attman rights and the horror of war and I think I can deliver her message in this play.”

The Gatehouse, July 23-26, 7.30pm, 4pm matinee on July 26. Details: 020 8340 3488, upstairsatthegatehouse.com