Barbra Streisand Remembers Phone Call From Robert Redford: ‘I Love You Dearly’

Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford became one of cinema’s most iconic couples in 1973’s The Way We Were, but they also became good friends. 

Streisand, 83, looked back at the making of The Way We Were in her 2023 memoir My Name Is Barbra. The actress was first attached to the film, which was written by Arthur Laurents and directed by Sydney Pollack. She would play driven college student Katie Morosky, who falls for Hubbell Gardiner.

“I had a particular actor in mind for Hubbell…Robert Redford…who happened to be good friends with Sydney, so everything seemed to be falling into place,” Streisand wrote of the actor, who died Sept. 16 at age 89.

She said it was “not because of his appearance,” though she admitted he was “very handsome” with a “wonderful jawline” and “great teeth.” Instead, she praised his “complexity.” She wrote, “Like the greatest movie stars, Bob understands the power of restraint.”

But Redford originally turned down the role. Negotiations “went down to the wire,” but Pollack, who died in 2008 at 73, got him to agree.

“Bob and I were genuinely curious about each other, and I believe that’s what comes across on the screen,” Streisand wrote of the star, remembering that he would tell her about growing up in California and his love of skiing. He even took her on a motorcycle ride one day. 

“It was great fun to work with Bob,” Streisand wrote. “He and I had a real rapport and the audience could sense it. It’s hard to explain why a certain combination of two actors works, but in one interview, Bob tried: ‘Barbra…her femininity brings out the masculinity in a man, and her masculinity brings out a man’s femininity, vulnerability, romanticism, whatever you want to call it.’ No wonder I liked him. He’s very perceptive.”

Streisand also remembered that Redford “loved to tease” her on set. During one scene, she wrote, “When Katie’s about to start a fight with the director who’s making a movie of Hubbell’s book, Bob clapped his hand over my mouth. Of all the ways in my life that people have tried to shut me up, that was by far the funniest.”

The Way We Were was a success and was nominated for six Oscars. Streisand wrote, “I was honored to be nominated for best actress, but I was very disappointed that Bob wasn’t nominated for best actor for our movie, because he was amazing in it.” (He was, however, nominated that year for The Sting.)

“I think it’s one of Bob’s best performances…and probably one of mine as well…and I’m thrilled whenever I see us listed as one of the screen’s most romantic couples,” she wrote. “We made something that will last a long time…much longer than most real marriages.”

The Way We Were celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, and Streisand writes in her memoir of her quest to get some missing scenes from the film that further illuminated Katie and Hubbell’s political difficulties back into the movie for a new extended edition on its anniversary Blu-ray release. 

Streisand called Redford amid her creation of the new extended edition. “I wanted to explain what I was doing and see how he felt about it,” she wrote. “So I called him up, and Bob was wonderful…open and thoughtful and engaging, as always. He said he would support me ‘absolutely,’ which meant so much to me.” 

They spoke for over an hour. “When we were hanging up, he said, ‘I gotta go, Babs. I love you dearly, and I always will.’” Streisand told him, “I love you too,” and invited him and his wife, Sibylle Szaggars, over for lunch when they came to Los Angeles.

“I told him, ‘I love talking to you,’ and he said, ‘I love talking to you. I always do.’ It was a sweet reminder that the connection we had during that movie still exists,” she wrote. 

Streisand and Redford’s post-career public reunions included when he received an honorary Oscar in 2002, a 2010 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and when, in 2015, he received the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award.