Barbra Streisand brought a poignant moment to the 2026 Oscars on Sunday night, taking the stage during the In Memoriam section to deliver an emotional tribute to her late friend and collaborator, Robert Redford.
The legendary singer, 83, performed a section of “The Way We Were,” the title track of Sydney Pollack’s 1973 romantic drama, in which she co-starred opposite Redford. The iconic duo played mismatched lovers — Streisand’s fiery activist against Redford’s golden boy athlete-turned-writer — whose passionate but ultimately doomed romance became one of the era’s most defining love stories.
Written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch, the song became Billboard’s No. 1 in its day, winning an Oscar and song of the year at the Grammys in 1974.
From the stage, Streisand noted that Redford originally turned down the part in the film, because he felt his character “had no backbone.”
“Now, Bob had real backbone on and off the screen,” Streisand said. “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.”
“I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” she added. “He’d call me Babs, and I’d say, ‘Bob, you know, do I look like a Babs? I’m not a Babs!”
Streisand then broke into a roughly minute-long version of “The Way We Were” with backing from the Oscars orchestra.
The performance, although brief, was rare and riveting, given that the legendary singer has effectively retired from live performance since performing a handful of times in 2019. It was also Streisand’s first song at an Oscars ceremony since 2013, when she sang “The Way We Were” as part of the In Memoriam to honor Hamlisch’s death over the preceding year.
Redford died in September at age 89. Streisand remembered him in a moving Instagram post, writing at the time: “Every day on the set of The Way We Were was exciting, intense and pure joy. We were such opposites: he was from the world of horses; I was allergic to them! Yes, we kept trying to find out more about each other, just like the characters in the movie. Bob was charismatic, intelligent, intense, always interesting — and one of the finest actors ever.”
“The last time I saw him, when he came to lunch, we discussed art and decided to send each other our first drawings,” Streisand continued. “He was one of a kind and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him.”
Redford won an Oscar for directing Ordinary People in 1980. He never won in an acting category (despite receiving four Golden Globes for acting), but he eventually received an honorary Oscar for his career achievements in 2002.
