Jane Fonda appeared at the opening night of the TCM Classic Film Festival on Thursday night, where she took a moment to explain her reaction to Robert Redford’s In Memoriam clip at the Oscars.
During the Academy Awards in March, Barbra Streisand took the stage to an emotional rendition of “The Way We Were,” the theme song to Sidney Pollack’s 1973 romantic drama, which starred Redford and Streisand. While on the carpet in Vanity gallery “The Oscars are the other night,” Fonda quipped. Entertainment tonight“,”I want to know how Streisand was there doing it for Redford? I’ve only made one film with him. I made four! I have more to say.”
He held off until Thursday, when Fonda arrived in Hollywood to celebrate her and Redford’s 1967 film Barefoot in the parkwhich served as the opening ceremony for this year’s Traditional Chinese Medicine Festival. In a pre-screening conversation with Ben Mankiewicz, Fonda said of her frequent co-star: “He’s the only person I’ve made four movies with, and he would have done a lot more if I had the chance. But I loved him and respected him so much, they didn’t ask me to be at the Oscars,” to laughter from the audience. Fonda then explained her viral moment, saying, “I thought I was funny” in the interview, “but I actually thought it would have been great that they had Barbara in there because this was an iconic movie and the song was so great — Bob would have loved it.”
Much of the rest of the conversation was spent revealing how much Fonda admired Redford, as she recalled when the two actors met in the 1966 film. Stalking; They were both married at the time, so I asked him: Have you ever had affairs? “Well, if I’m going to have an affair, it’s going to be with someone who looks like a whore,” he replied. She later joked that “he was fun to be with and he was also reckless – he wasn’t so reckless as to be in a relationship with me, but he loved fast cars” and described him as “the most amazing human being I’ve ever been with”.
Reflecting on their many collaborations, Fonda admitted, “I had such a crush on him that it hurt,” and she was always looking for a moment to be close to him or hold his hand. “Last One[2017[2017’sOur souls at night]We were in bed together the whole time! But nothing.” She also teased that she loved his 1984 film Natural But “I hated watching him kiss Glenn Close.”
Fonda noted that female attention “made him very uncomfortable” at times, as she would see women running toward him and fainting at his feet. “It was hard for him to become a movie star, but he loved the power it gave him because he was able to do Sundance and change movies.”
Redford’s creation of Sundance is a key part of his legacy, with Fonda emphasizing that he wanted to step back from Hollywood’s focus on commercial projects and support independent films. “He wanted variety, he wanted complexity, he wanted surprises,” she said. “He could have built an empire, built a nest for artists to feel secure.”
The two stars also bonded over their activist spirit, Fonda explained, with a timely message for today (and with TCM, the Warner Bros. Discovery property that appears destined for Paramount): “When I look at what’s happening in this city — when I look at the pending mergers, for example, if that goes through — we’re going to lose what Bob was trying to do. I want to fight in the spirit of Robert Redford.”
