Jane Fonda is clarifying her comments about Barbra Streisand’s Academy Awards tribute to the late Robert Redford.
“He’s the only person I made four movies with, and would have done a lot more if I had the chance,” Fonda, 88, said during the TCM Classic Film Festival on Thursday, April 30, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I loved him and I deeply respect him, and they didn’t ask me to do the Oscars.”
Redford died in September 2025 at the age of 89. Instead of Fonda, Streisand, 84, took to the stage to honor his legacy at the 2026 Oscars in March.
“I want to know how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford,” Fonda quipped to Entertainment Tonight later that month. “She only made one movie with him, I made four!”
Fonda and Redford costarred in Tall Story, The Chase, Barefoot in the Park, The Electric Horseman and Our Souls at Night. Streisand, meanwhile, acted opposite Redford in The Way We Were.
During the Thursday event, Fonda stressed that her comments were made in jest.
“I thought I was being funny, but actually I thought it was fabulous that they had Barbra out there because that was such an iconic movie and the song was so incredibly [moving],” she said of Streisand and Redford’s The Way We Were. “Bob would have liked it.”
Streisand, who did not respond to Fonda’s remarks, sang the two-time Oscar-winning film’s title track during the Oscars’ In Memoriam segment.
“After I read the first script of The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role and that was Robert Redford. But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone,” the EGOT winner added during the ceremony. “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.”
Streisand continued, “He was thoughtful and old. I called him a little intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail. I miss him now more than ever.”
Fonda has also been candid about mourning Redford’s death.
“It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone. I can’t stop crying,” she told Us Weekly in a statement at the time. “He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”
