Barbra Streisand, a master of both showstoppers and tearjerkers, paid tribute to her costar in The Way We Were, Robert Redford, at the Academy Awards. After stepping up to the podium for the Memoriam segment, shortly after tributes to Rob Reiner and Diane Keaton, she recalled working with Redford on the 1973 movie. She also performed the song “The Way We Were,” which won the Best Original Song Oscar in 1974.
“After I read the first script of The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role of Hubbell [Gardiner], and that was Robert Redford,” Streisand said. “But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone, he doesn’t stand for anything. And he was right. So many drafts later, Bob finally agreed to do it. He was a brilliant, subtle actor, and we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in a scene.”
Barbra Streisand honors the late Robert Redford at the 2026 #Oscars pic.twitter.com/AXhfy06C8z
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She also shared her happiness that the movie was now considered “a classic love story” that took place during a “dark time in our history,” the late Forties and Fifties, the era of McCarthyism. “Now Bob had real backbone, on and off the screen,” she said. “He spoke up to defend freedom of the press, protect the environment, and encourage new voices at his Sundance Institute, and some of whom are up for Oscars tonight, which is so great. He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an ‘intellectual cowboy,’ who blazed his own trail and won the Academy Award for Best Director. And I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me.”
At issue, she said, was Redford’s penchant for calling her “Babs.” “I’d say, ‘Bob, do I look like a Babs? I’m not a ‘Babs.’ But the way he said it made me laugh. And many years later, we were chatting on the phone about the usual: politics, art, Modigliani, our favourite. And as we were hanging up, he said, ‘Babs, I love you dearly, and I always will.’ And in the last note I ever wrote to Bob, I ended it with, ‘I love you, too.’ And I signed it, ‘Babs.’”
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She then performed her moving rendition of “The Way We Were,” with true, deep emotion in her voice. Over the orchestra was a quote from Redford: “The glory of art is that it can not only survive change, it can lead it.” It made for one of the evening’s most moving moments.
From Rolling Stone US
