Susan Brewer is best known as the first wife of Peter Fonda, the actor and filmmaker who became a symbol of 1960s counterculture through Easy Rider. But Susan’s story reaches beyond that famous marriage. She came from a well-connected family, studied at Sarah Lawrence College, developed creative interests of her own, and became the mother of actress Bridget Fonda and Justin Fonda.
Susan married Peter on October 8, 1961, when his acting career was only beginning. They remained married for nearly 13 years before their divorce was finalized on April 15, 1974.
Afterward, Susan largely avoided celebrity attention. She later married film-industry figure Bill Tennant, continued her own creative work, and watched her daughter Bridget become the third generation of one of Hollywood’s most famous acting families.
Who Is Susan Brewer?
Susan Jane Brewer is an American artist and occasional film-industry worker best known for her marriage to Peter Fonda.
She became part of the Fonda family before Peter achieved the international fame associated with Easy Rider.
That timing matters.
When Susan married him in 1961, Peter was still establishing himself as an actor. His father, Henry Fonda, was already one of Hollywood’s great stars, while his sister Jane Fonda was beginning her own remarkable career.
Susan therefore entered a famous family, but she did not marry Peter at the height of his own success.
She experienced that rise beside him.
When Was Susan Brewer Born?
Some public biographical listings give Susan’s birth date as May 12, 1939.
Recent secondary profiles also place her birth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
However, those details are not as strongly documented as her marriage and family records.
Because Susan has remained unusually private, her early life has not been covered extensively by major mainstream publications.
The safest conclusion is that she was born around the late 1930s.
If the commonly listed May 1939 date is correct, she would be 87 years old in 2026.
Who Were Susan Brewer’s Parents?
Susan’s mother was Mary Brewer.
One especially interesting part of Susan’s childhood was her stepfather, Noah Dietrich.
Dietrich was one of billionaire Howard Hughes’ most important business associates and spent decades connected with Hughes’ financial empire.
Esquire’s 1968 profile of Peter Fonda specifically described Susan as the stepdaughter of Howard Hughes’ former assistant Noah Dietrich.
IMDb’s biography of Dietrich likewise identifies him as Susan Brewer’s stepfather.
This meant Susan grew up with some familiarity with wealthy and influential business circles before she ever became connected with the Fonda acting family.
Who Was Noah Dietrich?
Noah Dietrich was born in 1889 and became one of Howard Hughes’ closest financial executives.
He spent decades helping manage Hughes’ complicated collection of businesses.
Dietrich later became known publicly through books, interviews, and dramatizations about Hughes.
He married Susan’s mother, Mary Brewer, in 1955.
That made him Susan’s stepfather during her teenage and young-adult years.
Interestingly, Susan would soon enter another famous American family when she married Peter Fonda.
One side of her life connected her indirectly to Howard Hughes.
The other connected her directly to Henry, Jane, and Peter Fonda.
Where Did Susan Brewer Go to School?
Historical Fonda family records say Susan attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles.
She later studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
A reproduced contemporary wedding report described her as a Sarah Lawrence junior when she married Peter Fonda in 1961.
Sarah Lawrence was known for its strong emphasis on arts, humanities, and independent thinking.
That educational background fits with Susan’s later description as an artist and creative person.
She was not simply entering Hollywood through marriage.
She had her own intellectual and artistic interests.
How Did Susan Brewer Meet Peter Fonda?
The exact first meeting between Susan and Peter has not been described in detail by the strongest available sources.
What is clear is that their relationship developed while Peter was still young and building his acting career.
By 1961, he had begun finding serious work on stage.
Peter appeared in the Broadway production Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole, a performance that helped establish his early reputation.
Esquire later reported that he married Susan only a few days after the production opened.
It was therefore a very different stage of his life from the one most movie fans remember.
There was no Captain America motorcycle.
No Easy Rider.
No Academy Award nomination.
Susan knew the ambitious young actor before he became a counterculture icon.
A natural internal-link opportunity would be Peter Fonda’s life before Easy Rider and his complicated relationship with Henry Fonda.
When Did Susan Brewer Marry Peter Fonda?
Susan and Peter married on October 8, 1961.
IMDb gives that exact wedding date.
Historical family records describe the ceremony as taking place at St. Bartholomew’s Protestant Episcopal Church in New York.
Susan’s stepfather Noah Dietrich reportedly gave her away, while her sister Ruth Brewer served as maid of honor.
Peter’s father Henry Fonda was already a major Hollywood figure.
Yet Peter himself was only 21.
Susan was also very young.
Their marriage began before either could have known just how dramatically their lives would change over the following decade.
Was Peter Fonda Famous When They Married?
Not yet in the way he later became famous.
Peter had acting experience and came from a famous family, but he was still establishing his own identity.
His early movie work included Tammy and the Doctor, The Victors, Lilith, and The Young Lovers.
Later came films such as The Wild Angels and The Trip.
Then everything changed in 1969.
Peter co-wrote, produced, and starred in Easy Rider.
The low-budget road movie became a cultural phenomenon.
It also earned Peter, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Susan was his wife through that entire rise.
How Many Children Did Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda Have?
Susan and Peter had two biological children together:
Bridget Fonda and Justin Fonda.
CBS News later confirmed that Susan was the mother of Peter’s two children.
Some references list Peter as having three children because he later treated his second wife’s son, Thomas McGuane, as his own.
But Thomas was Peter’s stepson from his marriage to Portia Rebecca Crockett.
Susan and Peter themselves had two children.
This distinction helps avoid one of the most common errors in the Fonda family tree.
When Was Bridget Fonda Born?
Bridget Jane Fonda was born on January 27, 1964, in Los Angeles.
IMDb identifies her parents as Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda.
Bridget became the most famous of Susan’s children.
She followed three generations of family history into acting.
Her grandfather was Henry Fonda.
Her aunt was Jane Fonda.
Her father was Peter Fonda.
And Bridget eventually established a successful film career of her own.
A useful internal-link opportunity would be Bridget Fonda’s life, acting career, retirement, and marriage to Danny Elfman.
Did Bridget Fonda Appear in Easy Rider?
Yes.
Bridget appeared briefly in Easy Rider when she was only a small child.
IMDb says she made her movie debut at age five as an extra in the film.
At that point, nobody could have known she would eventually become a successful actress herself.
She later appeared in films including The Godfather Part III, Single White Female, Singles, Point of No Return, Jackie Brown, and A Simple Plan.
Bridget retired from acting in the early 2000s.
In 2023, when asked about returning to Hollywood, she made it clear that she preferred the life she had built away from acting.
That preference for privacy is something she may share with her mother.
Who Is Justin Fonda?
Justin de Villers Fonda was born on July 9, 1966.
IMDb identifies Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda as his parents.
Unlike his sister Bridget, Justin did not become a major movie star.
He worked around the entertainment industry and has been associated with acting and camera work.
His credits include projects such as Vertical Limit, A River Runs Through It, and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.
Justin has generally maintained a much lower public profile than Bridget or Peter.
That again makes Susan’s side of the Fonda family far more private than the more famous acting branches.
What Was Susan Brewer’s Career?
Susan is commonly described as an artist.
IMDb also connects her with behind-the-scenes entertainment work, including casting and costume or wardrobe departments.
Credits associated with a Susan Brewer include Vision Quest, Time Walker, and Lovely But Deadly.
However, same-name confusion is always possible with film databases.
The strongest identity link is IMDb’s statement that this Susan Brewer was previously married to Peter Fonda.
She therefore appears to have had at least some independent involvement with film production.
Still, her career was never promoted on the same scale as Peter’s or Bridget’s.
Describing her primarily as an artist and creative professional is more accurate than trying to build an exaggerated Hollywood résumé around limited credits.
What Was Life Like During Easy Rider?
By the late 1960s, Peter’s world looked very different from the one Susan had entered in 1961.
He was part of a counterculture Hollywood circle that included actors, musicians, filmmakers, and artists.
His image became closely connected with motorcycles, anti-establishment ideas, marijuana culture, and the rapidly changing America of the late 1960s.
Easy Rider was made for relatively little money but became a major commercial and cultural success.
The film turned Peter and Dennis Hopper into symbols of a younger generation.
For Susan, this meant being married to someone whose public identity was changing quickly.
Peter was no longer simply Henry Fonda’s son.
He had become famous on his own terms.
When Did Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda Divorce?
Their divorce was finalized on April 15, 1974, according to IMDb.
That ended a marriage of roughly 12 and a half years.
Broader biographies commonly round the relationship to 13 years and list the marriage as 1961 to 1974.
Their children were still young.
Bridget was about 10.
Justin was around seven.
After the divorce, the family entered a new stage, particularly after Peter remarried.
Why Did Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda Divorce?
There is no single reliably documented public explanation from Susan herself.
Peter’s life during the late 1960s and early 1970s could be intense.
His film career, travel, counterculture lifestyle, and personal relationships created an unconventional environment.
But it would be wrong to select one of those elements and declare it the definite cause of the divorce without a direct statement.
Susan rarely gave interviews discussing the marriage.
The safest account is that their relationship eventually ended after nearly 13 years.
The divorce became final in 1974.
Did Susan Brewer Remarry?
Yes.
Susan later married William “Bill” Tennant, an actor, producer, and film-industry figure.
IMDb lists their marriage from June 27, 1975 to June 25, 1984.
That means Susan remarried a little more than a year after her divorce from Peter.
Bill Tennant had an interesting Hollywood history of his own.
He worked as an actor and producer and had earlier served as Roman Polanski’s business manager.
Susan and Bill’s marriage eventually ended in divorce.
Who Was Bill Tennant?
William Cecil Tennant was born in Los Angeles in 1941.
He worked in film and television and was associated with projects including The Hollywood Knights, King of the Mountain, and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold.
His life also intersected with one of Hollywood’s darkest moments.
IMDb notes that Tennant, as Roman Polanski’s business manager, was involved in identifying victims after the 1969 murders at the Cielo Drive home shared by Polanski and Sharon Tate.
Susan and Tennant divorced in 1984.
He later remarried and died in 2012.
Who Did Peter Fonda Marry After Susan?
Peter married Portia Rebecca Crockett, often called Becky, in 1975.
She had previously been married to writer Thomas McGuane and had a son named Thomas.
Peter treated Thomas as his own son and reportedly disliked referring to him merely as a stepson.
Peter and Becky remained married for decades before divorcing in 2011.
That same year, Peter married Margaret “Parky” DeVogelaere.
They remained married until Peter’s death in 2019.
Susan therefore belonged to the earliest chapter of his adult family life.
Did Susan Remain Connected to Bridget and Justin?
Susan remained their mother, although detailed information about the private family relationship is scarce.
A 1985 Washington Post profile described Bridget and Justin as Peter’s children “whose mother is his first wife, Susan Brewer.” At the time, both were college students.
Bridget eventually followed the Fonda acting tradition.
Justin remained much more private.
There is no reliable evidence that Susan attempted to use her children’s fame to create a celebrity identity for herself.
Her public profile stayed remarkably low even as Bridget became well known in the 1990s.
What Happened to Peter Fonda?
Peter continued acting for decades after his marriage to Susan ended.
His performance in Ulee’s Gold earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
He later appeared in films such as 3:10 to Yuma, Ghost Rider, and The Limey.
Peter died on August 16, 2019, at age 79.
Los Angeles Times reporting at the time noted that he had two children, Bridget and Justin, with Susan Brewer.
Susan was no longer part of Peter’s public family life by then, but their marriage remained central to the Fonda family tree.
Is Susan Brewer Still Alive?
There is no credible, clearly matched report of Susan Brewer Fonda’s death in the sources reviewed.
Several obituaries exist for other women named Susan Brewer, but they concern unrelated people.
For example, a 2012 Seattle obituary belongs to Susan Jean Brewer, a completely different woman with another husband and children.
A 2026 obituary for Susan Brewer Brandt likewise belongs to another person.
Those records should not be attached to Peter Fonda’s former wife.
The responsible conclusion is that Susan’s current life is private and no verified death record was found.
What Is Susan Brewer’s Net Worth?
Susan’s personal net worth is not publicly verified.
Some modern celebrity websites estimate her wealth at between $1 million and $2 million, but they do not provide enough financial evidence to treat that number as fact.
She has been connected with art and film-industry work.
She also spent years married to prominent Hollywood figures.
But none of that allows an outsider to calculate her private finances accurately.
Peter Fonda’s later wealth should not simply be assigned to Susan either.
They divorced in 1974, decades before the end of his career.
Why Is Susan Brewer Still Interesting Today?
Much of the interest comes from the extraordinary family around her.
She married the son of Henry Fonda.
Her sister-in-law was Jane Fonda.
Her husband became an Easy Rider icon.
Then her daughter Bridget became a successful actress herself.
Susan therefore stood at the center of several generations of Hollywood history without ever becoming a major celebrity herself.
She also knew Peter before the image that made him famous existed.
That gives her story a different importance.
She saw the transition.
From Henry Fonda’s young son trying to prove himself to one of the defining faces of American counterculture cinema.
Interesting Facts About Susan Brewer
Susan Brewer was Peter Fonda’s first wife.
Her stepfather was Noah Dietrich, Howard Hughes’ longtime business associate.
She studied at Sarah Lawrence College.
Susan and Peter married on October 8, 1961.
They had two children, Bridget and Justin Fonda.
Their marriage covered Peter’s rise to international fame through Easy Rider.
They divorced on April 15, 1974.
Susan later married Bill Tennant in 1975 and divorced him in 1984.
She has been described as an artist and has some film-industry credits.
Her present-day private life is not well documented.
Final Thoughts
Susan Brewer occupies a fascinating place in the history of the Fonda family.
She married Peter Fonda before he became an international movie icon.
At the time, Peter was a young actor trying to build a career outside the enormous shadow of his father, Henry Fonda.
Susan was educated at Sarah Lawrence College and came from an interesting family background of her own. Her stepfather, Noah Dietrich, had spent decades working closely with Howard Hughes.
Susan and Peter married in 1961.
Then came their children.
Bridget was born in 1964.
Justin followed in 1966.
And then Peter’s career exploded.
Easy Rider turned him into a symbol of a changing America.
Susan experienced that fame from inside the marriage.
But the relationship did not last.
Their divorce became final in April 1974.
Susan later married Bill Tennant and continued living a life far more private than Peter’s.
Meanwhile, Bridget Fonda eventually became a major actress herself, adding another generation to the Fonda Hollywood dynasty.
That may be Susan Brewer’s most enduring public connection.
She was not simply Peter Fonda’s first wife.
She was the mother of the next Fonda generation, a creative person in her own right, and someone who experienced one of Hollywood’s most famous family stories from remarkably close range while still managing to keep most of her own life private.
For more carefully researched celebrity biographies and family stories, visit Charles Magazine.
FAQs About Susan Brewer
Who is Susan Brewer?
Susan Brewer is an American artist and occasional film-industry professional best known as Peter Fonda’s first wife and the mother of Bridget and Justin Fonda.
When did Susan Brewer marry Peter Fonda?
Susan and Peter married on October 8, 1961. Their divorce was finalized on April 15, 1974.
How many children did Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda have?
They had two children together: actress Bridget Fonda and Justin Fonda.
Is Susan Brewer Bridget Fonda’s mother?
Yes. Bridget Fonda was born to Susan Brewer and Peter Fonda on January 27, 1964.
Who was Susan Brewer’s stepfather?
Her stepfather was Noah Dietrich, the longtime business associate and financial executive connected with Howard Hughes.
Did Susan Brewer remarry after Peter Fonda?
Yes. She married actor and producer Bill Tennant in 1975. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1984.
Is Susan Brewer still alive?
No clearly matched, reliable death report for Peter Fonda’s former wife was found. Obituaries for other women named Susan Brewer should not be confused with her, so her current life is best described as private.
