Barbra’s Tears for Redford: The Lunch, the Drawings, and the Telegram That Sealed The Way We Were

Barbra Streisand is looking back on the time she spent with her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford, calling their experience together on set “exciting, intense and pure joy.”

In a heartfelt Instagram tribute, Streisand wrote, “We were total opposites—he grew up around horses; I was allergic to them! But we kept learning about each other, just like Katie and Hubbell. Bob was charismatic, brilliant, intense—one of the greatest actors I’ve ever known. The last time we met for lunch we swapped our very first drawings. He was one of a kind, and I’m forever grateful we shared that film.”

Redford—Oscar-winning actor, director and founder of the Sundance Film Institute—died Tuesday at 89. A family spokesperson told Variety: “Robert Redford passed away Sept. 16, 2025, at his beloved Sundance, surrounded by loved ones. The family asks for privacy.”

In Sydney Pollack’s 1973 classic, Streisand played fiery activist Katie Morosky; Redford was golden-boy writer Hubbell Gardiner. Their on-screen romance became one of America’s most iconic love stories, earning Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (Streisand’s title hit “The Way We Were”).

Streisand’s memoir My Name Is Barbra reveals she lobbied hard for Redford after he initially passed. While filming Up the Sandbox in Africa, she received a telegram that simply read: “Barbra Redford!”
“That’s when I knew he’d said yes,” she recalled. “His hesitation actually deepened the script—and Hubbell.”