Coming Home is a 1978 American romantic war drama film directed by Hal Ashby from a screenplay written by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones with story by Nancy Dowd.

At the 36th Golden Globe Awards, it received six nominations including for the Best Motion Picture – Drama, with Voight and Fonda winning Best Actor and Best Actress.

In 1968 California, Sally, a loyal and conservative military wife, is married to Bob Hyde, a captain in the United States Marine Corps, who is about to be deployed to Vietnam.

Bob places his neatly folded Marine dress uniform on the beach, takes off his wedding ring, and swims naked out into the ocean to commit suicide.

Coming Home was conceived by Jane Fonda as the first feature for her own production company, IPC Films (for the Indochina Peace Campaign), with her associate producer Bruce Gilbert, a friend from her protest days.

In 1972, Fonda hired Nancy Dowd, a friend from her days in the feminist movement, to write a script about the consequences of the war as seen through the eyes of a military wife.

[3] Originally, Dowd's story, tentatively titled Buffalo Ghosts, focused on two women, volunteers at a veterans' hospital, who must come to grips with the emotional toll that the war takes on its casualties and their families.

The screenplay was reshaped significantly by the circle of talent who eventually brought it to the screen: Fonda, Ashby, Wexler, Jon Voight, producer Hellman and screenwriters Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones.

They were united by their opposition to the Vietnam War and by their concern for the veterans who were returning to America and facing difficulties adapting to life back home.

[4][a] John Schlesinger, who had worked with producers Hellman and Voight on Midnight Cowboy, was originally named the director, but he left the project after feeling uncomfortable with the subject matter.

In the original ending, Bruce Dern's character got himself a heavy machine gun, in a moment of madness went into the L.A. freeway, five lanes of traffic in both directions, and started shooting away, destroying everything in sight, an inferno.

Voight had participated in the anti-war movement and was a friend of Fonda, who was instrumental in helping him land the role, even though he had fallen from popularity since his Midnight Cowboy heyday.

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times commented that: "Despite an over-explicit soundtrack and some moments when the story in fact became a sermon, the movie effectively translated a changed national consciousness into credible and touching personal terms."

The website's critical consensus reads: "Coming Home's stellar cast elevates the love triangle in the center of its story - and adds a necessary human component to its none-too-subtle political message.