60 Years, 4 Films, and One Oscar Night Moment That Said Everything About Their Bond

Jane Fonda stormed an Oscar party furious that Barbra Streisand got to honor Robert Redford… “She only made ONE movie with him. I made FOUR. I have more to say!”

The champagne was flowing, the gold statues had been handed out, and Hollywood’s elite were scattered across glittering Oscar night parties when Jane Fonda — resplendent, sharp-tongued, and absolutely not done talking — pulled aside a reporter and said exactly what was on her mind.

It started with the In Memoriam segment.

Every year, the Academy pauses the glitz and the competition to remember those it has lost. This year, the losses were devastating. The entertainment world had said goodbye to legends — names that had shaped cinema for generations. But there was one name above all others that hung heavy in the air of the 98th Academy Awards: Robert Redford.

He had died the previous September, quietly, at the age of 89. The announcement had come on a Tuesday morning, and it had landed like a stone dropped into still water — the ripples spreading outward through every corner of Hollywood, reaching actors, directors, writers, producers, fans, and friends who had carried the memory of his blue eyes, his effortless charisma, and his relentless belief in the power of independent storytelling.

When it was time to honor him at the Oscars, the Academy made a choice.

They called Barbra Streisand.

The legendary singer and actress — one of the most iconic entertainers alive — took the stage in a stunning gown, her presence commanding the room into silence. She spoke about Redford with warmth and intimacy, recalling their collaboration on the 1973 Sydney Pollack romance The Way We Were, a film that had become one of the great love stories in cinematic history. “He was a brilliant, subtle actor,” she said, her voice steady and full of feeling. “And we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in the scene.”

And then — in a moment that stunned the audience and sent social media into overdrive — she sang. A rare live rendition of “The Way We Were,” her voice carrying across the Dolby Theatre in a performance that hadn’t been seen at the Oscars in over a decade. The audience was on its feet. There were tears. There were gasps.

It was beautiful. Undeniably, breathtakingly beautiful.

But not everyone was satisfied.

Across town, at one of the most exclusive Oscar night parties in Los Angeles, Jane Fonda was holding court.

At 88, she remains one of the most vital, opinionated, and fiercely present women in Hollywood. She had dressed impeccably for the evening, as she always does. She had opinions about the ceremony, as she always does. And when an Entertainment Tonight reporter managed to get close enough to ask her about the night, Fonda did not hold back.

“I want to know how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford?” she said, her eyes sparkling with that mixture of mischief and sincerity that has made her impossible to ignore for seven decades.

She let the question land. Then came the punchline.

“She only made one movie with him. I made four. I have more to say.”

The room around her erupted. Laughter, gasps, the kind of delighted shock that only Jane Fonda can produce.

And she wasn’t entirely wrong.

Let’s do the math, because Jane Fonda clearly has.

Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford made one film together: The Way We Were (1973). It is, without question, one of the most iconic films either of them ever made. The chemistry between them was electric. The story of Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardner — the passionate, political girl and the golden, effortless boy who couldn’t quite bridge the gap between them — has haunted audiences for over fifty years. “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell” remains one of the most quietly devastating lines in the history of romantic cinema.

But one film is one film.

Jane Fonda and Robert Redford made four.

Their collaboration stretched across nearly six decades, beginning when both of them were young and hungry and just starting to understand the kind of careers they might have. They made The Tall Story together in 1960, a comedy about a college basketball player and a girl determined to marry him — charming, light, and a glimpse of the stars they were becoming. Then came The Chase in 1966, a darker, more serious film about corruption and mob mentality in a small Texas town. A year later, they were back together for Barefoot in the Park (1967), the Neil Simon adaptation that showcased their effortless comedic timing as newlyweds navigating a fifth-floor walk-up in New York City.

And then, fifty years after they first appeared on screen together, they made Our Souls at Night (2017). A Netflix film, quiet and tender and genuinely moving, about two elderly neighbors who begin spending their nights together — not romantically, at first, just talking, filling the silence that widowhood and age had left behind. It was a film that asked whether it was too late to find connection, and it answered with a gentle, insistent yes.

Four films. Nearly six decades. A friendship that clearly meant the world to both of them.

When news of Redford’s death broke in September 2025, Fonda had been one of the first to speak publicly.

“It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone,” she said in a statement. “I can’t stop crying. He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way.”

She paused in the statement, and then added something that spoke to the larger context of the moment — the America that both she and Redford had spent their lives fighting for, arguing about, and trying to preserve. “He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”

It was the statement of a friend. Of someone who had known him not just as a collaborator but as a fellow traveler through the turbulent decades of American history. They had both been outspoken. They had both been controversial. They had both used their platforms when it would have been easier and more comfortable not to.

Redford had founded the Sundance Film Festival, transforming a small Utah ski resort into the most important independent film marketplace in the world. He had championed stories that Hollywood didn’t want to tell, voices that Hollywood didn’t want to amplify. He had put his money and his reputation behind a vision of cinema that was messier and more honest and more human than what the studios were offering.

Fonda knew all of that. She had watched it happen. She had been part of it, in her own way.

And so when Barbra Streisand stood on the Oscars stage and sang “The Way We Were” in his honor — beautiful as it was — Fonda felt something.

Not anger, exactly. Not bitterness.

More like: That should have been me too.

The thing about grief is that it doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.

Sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes it looks like silence. Sometimes it looks like a woman at an Oscar party, champagne in hand, sharp as a tack at 88, saying with a laugh and a raised eyebrow: “She only made ONE movie with him. I made FOUR.”

The laugh is real. The love underneath it is realer.

Fonda talked more about Redford as the evening went on. She said he was “the most gorgeous human being.” She said he had “such great values.” She talked about what he had done for independent cinema, the way he had used his celebrity not just to get rich and famous but to genuinely change the landscape of what American movies could be.

“He did a lot for movies,” she said. “He really changed movies. Lifted up independent movies.”

She said this with admiration. With something close to awe, even — and Jane Fonda is not a woman who is easily awed.

Back in the Dolby Theatre, Streisand’s tribute had concluded. The audience was still buzzing. Conan O’Brien, hosting his first Oscars with the loose, self-deprecating ease of a man who had spent decades making uncomfortable situations funny, moved the evening forward.

But the In Memoriam segment had not finished its work.

This year’s losses had been staggering. The Hollywood community had said goodbye to Rob Reiner, whose When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men had defined decades of American filmmaking. To Isiah Whitlock Jr., whose work had brought quiet dignity to so many projects. To Catherine O’Hara, the Canadian comedic genius who had made the world laugh for forty years. To Val Kilmer, who had burned so brilliantly and so briefly and left behind Top Gun and Tombstone and The Doors and Batman Forever and a career that still doesn’t get the credit it deserves. To Robert Duvall, one of the greatest American actors who ever lived.

And to so many others. The names that appear in white text on a dark screen, one after another, each one a world that has closed.

Fonda watched the tribute from the party, catching moments on screens placed around the room. She hadn’t caught everything — she’d missed, she told the ET reporter, the tribute to Diane Keaton led by Rachel McAdams. Keaton, her Book Club costar, had passed earlier in the year, and the loss had hit Fonda personally.

“Her passing hit me really hard,” she said, the humor in her voice dropping away for just a moment, replaced by something quieter.

Because beneath all the wit and the one-liners and the delicious Fonda audacity, this is a woman at 88 who has lost a great many people she loved. And who is still, stubbornly, defiantly, beautifully here — still talking, still laughing, still insisting she has more to say.

She does.

There’s a version of this story that reads as petty. Celebrity jealousy! Oscar night drama! Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand in a feud over a dead man’s tribute!

But that reading misses everything important.

This is a story about love. About the kind of love that doesn’t fit neatly into a tribute segment, that can’t be captured in one song, that spans decades and films and fights and laughter and loss. Jane Fonda loved Robert Redford. Not romantically — or not only romantically, or not in any way that was ever consummated or public. But the love was real. It was built across four films and sixty years and a shared belief in what America could be and what movies could do.

When she said “I was always in love with him,” she wasn’t being coy or performative. She was telling the truth.

And when she said “I made four movies with him, I have more to say” — she was also telling the truth. Not the truth of rivalry, but the truth of grief. The truth of a woman who had more memories than could fit in a segment. More stories than could be told in a speech. More love than could be expressed in a single song, however beautifully it was sung.

Barbra Streisand, for her part, was extraordinary.

The performance of “The Way We Were” was a gift to the audience, to Redford’s memory, and to the history of cinema. Her voice, at 83, carrying across the Dolby Theatre — that is not a small thing. That is a remarkable thing.

And The Way We Were is a remarkable film. The story of Katie and Hubbell is, in many ways, the story of all the loves that are too complicated to survive — too full of passion and difference and history to sustain themselves in the ordinary world. The ending, on that New York street, with Katie’s hand reaching out to brush back Hubbell’s hair one last time — there is no ending in American film more perfectly bittersweet.

Streisand carried that weight onto the stage. She carried it in her voice.

She deserved to be there.

But Jane Fonda wasn’t wrong, either.

Sometimes grief is big enough for more than one person. Sometimes the person we’ve lost meant different things to different people, and all of those things are true simultaneously.

Barbra Streisand had The Way We Were. The chemistry. The romance. The iconic film.

Jane Fonda had four decades. Four films. A friendship that stretched from when they were young to when they were old, from the early Hollywood of the 1960s to the streaming era of the 2010s.

Neither tribute cancels the other out.

At the end of the evening, as the Oscar night party wound down and the city of Los Angeles began to process another ceremony, another set of winners and losers and moments that would be discussed and debated for years, Jane Fonda was still going.

Still sharp. Still funny. Still full of opinions about who should have said what, who should have been on that stage, who had more to say.

At 88, she has every right.

She looked at the reporter, and smiled that Fonda smile — the one that contains multitudes, that has been honed across eight decades of life and work and love and loss.

“We lost a lot of really talented people,” she said. “I miss them all.”

A pause.

“But I especially miss Bob.”

She didn’t need the Oscars stage to say that. She said it at a party, to a reporter, with a glass of champagne and a laugh and the kind of grief that only sounds like competition if you’re not listening carefully enough.

If you listen carefully, it sounds like love.

Robert Redford. September 16, 2025. Age 89. Actor. Director. Founder. Friend.

The Way We Were. The Tall Story. The Chase. Barefoot in the Park. Our Souls at Night.

Five films. Two women. A lifetime of stories.

More than enough to say.