At Sunday’s (March 15) 2026 Oscars, Barbra Streisand took the stage to pay loving tribute to her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford, who died in September at age 89.
Streisand gave a speech honoring Redford as “an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail and won the Academy Award for best director, and I miss him now more than ever.” She wrapped up her fond words by singing a snippet of “The Way We Were,” her three-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 theme song for the 1973 romantic drama, which also won the Oscar for best original song at the 1974 ceremony.
Below, read Streisand’s full tribute to Redford:
After I read the first script for The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role of Hubbell, and that was Robert Redford. 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 or say. And I’m thrilled that The Way We Were is now considered a classic love story, but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths.
Now, Bob had real backbone, on and off the screen. He spoke up to defend freedom of the press, protect the environment and encouraged new voices at his Sundance Institute, 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. He called me Babs, and I’d say, “Bob, come on, do I look like a Babs?” I’m not a Babs, you know? But the way he said it made me laugh. And many years later, we were chatting on the phone about the usual — politics, art, [Italian painter and sculptor] Modigliani, our favorite — 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.”