Many of Jane Fonda’s Atlanta friends were disappointed Sunday night when the Poncey-Highland resident’s lead role in the Broadway hit “33 Variations” was not rewarded with a Tony Award.

Fonda has other thoughts on the subject, however, and let fans in on them via a dispatch posted from Paris where she is brushing up on her French for a L’Oreal commercial she’s shooting there (the 71-year-old actress has been hired as the French “brand ambassador” for the cosmetics giant (Diane Keaton has the gig stateside).

Writes Fonda: “I did not expect to win. From the very start, when people told me I would win, I appreciated their sentiments but never felt it was a Tony sort of role. Then, once I saw ‘Mary Stuart’ and ‘God of Carnage’ with the four other Tony nominees I felt I truly didn’t deserve to win. Those performances were towering. Truth be known, the entire five-month experience was the prize for me and I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to return to Broadway and discover how much I like being on stage and performing night after night.

“Friends often asked how I managed to do it over and over eight times a week. While it’s true that staying healthy and getting enough sleep is challenging, the chance to grow and deepen in your role makes it all worthwhile. I was finding new ways to play moments right up to the end. This deepening is something that you don’t get in movie acting. Also, it is a wondrous thing to have your whole life so intensely focused on that one thing-that one 2 hour performance. While I’m glad I don’t have to worry so much about sleep, I miss this focus a lot.”

To read Fonda’s entire blog entry, click here.

While the activist-actress will be spending the summer away from Atlanta, her film fans might have something new to celebrate. She’s contemplating accepting a role in a new movie co-starring Keaton.