Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | March 17, 2026
Confession time: I sobbed like a lost baby at this year’s Oscars in memoriam segment. It started almost immediately, from Billy Crystal celebrating the lives of Rob and Michele Reiner, and it didn’t end until the ad break. We lost a ton of incredible talents in 2025 and the Oscars managed to pay tribute to them in a rather beautiful way. In memoriam segments can be tough to pull off but this one was well-measured, highly moving, and elegant in its simplicity. And when Barbra Streisand walked on stage to celebrate Robert Redford, concluding with a rare live performance of ‘The Way We Were’? I was a mess. It was impeccably Barbra-esque — moving and a touch self-aggrandizing but earnest to a fault — and got the job done.
Jane Fonda, however, has notes.
Speaking on the red carpet at an Oscars afterparty (via The Guardian), Fonda told a red carpet reporter, “I want to know how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford?” She added that, while Streisand “only made one movie with him, I made four […] I have more to say.”
Old school Hollywood beef on aisle five!
Fonda’s not wrong though. She knew Redford for decades and their careers were heavily intertwined in many ways. They worked together on one of her breakout movies, 1967’s Barefoot in the Park, and they reunited in 2017 for Our Souls at Night, one of Redford’s last movies. They were both heavily political. They were friends. And they symbolized the changing of the guard, from old Hollywood to new as auteurs and socially-charged dramas took over from the studio system.
But Barbra and Redford were long-time pals too. She was the one who presented Redford with his honourary Oscar in 2002. I wonder if the Academy didn’t want Fonda to do it because they feared she’d get too political in the moment. She damn well should have, let’s be honest here. Redford would have loved that.
This minor beef does open up a few questions. Are Jane and Babs enemies? Did Barbarella and Fanny Brice fight over Redford in the ’60s and ’70s?! Was there an awkward personal situation that only they know about and will never let us discover? You can’t leave us hanging like this, Jane!
