Columbia Pictures
At the Academy Awards on Sunday night, Oscar winner and Hollywood legend Barbara Streisand took the stage to pay tribute to late actor and director Robert Redford, who passed away in September of last year. One person who was left confused by this move, however, was his other former co-star an fellow cinema icon Jane Fonda.
During the in-memoriam segment of the 90th Academy Awards, Robert Redford received his own special tribute (as did Diane Keaton), with Barbara Streisand taking the stage to recount their friendship/relationship. The pair had starred together in the 1973 film The Way We Were and remained friends in the decades since.
Jane Fonda said that she should have given the in-memoriam tribute to Robert Redford at the Academy Awards instead of Barbara Streisand
Fonda, however, starred in four movies alongside Redford, including one as recently as 2017: the romantic drama Our Souls At Night.
“I wanna know how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford. She only made one movie with him. I made four. I have more to say,” she joked to Entertainment Tonight at the Vanity Fair Oscar party.
“[I] was always in love with him. The most gorgeous human being and such great values. And he did a lot for movies, he really changed movies, lifted up independent movies.”
Fonda’s comments immediately went viral on social media, with one popular post pointing out that Redford was “so hot” that women he worked with decades ago are still fighting over him.
CHILE LMAOOOOO https://t.co/lHWf0tVI1h pic.twitter.com/BqHS7UshpX
— g. (@GeauxGabrielle) March 16, 2026
imagine being so hot that women you worked with decades ago with are still territorial about you. what a legend https://t.co/6jwlP1HFhM
— microplastics slime quest 🧫 (@facetedcarapace) March 16, 2026
Redford passed away on September 16, 2025 at the age of 80 years old. A longtime movie star and Oscar-winning director, Redford was also a champion on independent cinema, having co-founded the Sundance Film Festival in 1978.
His most notable credits included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President’s Men (1976), The Electric Horseman (1979), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), All Is Lost (2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Truth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017) and The Old Man & the Gun (2018).