Oscars 2026: Barbra Streisand Moves Viewers To Tears As She Sings During Tributes

The Oscars may well have set a new bar when it came to “in memoriam” tributes during this year’s ceremony.

Regrettably, because the film world has lost so many iconic performers and filmmakers in the last 12 months, this year’s Academy Awards tributes section was extended, with Billy Crystal leading a star-studded homage to Rob Reiner and Rachel McAdams honouring Diane Keaton.

At the end of the segment, Oscar winner Barbra Streisand came out to remember her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford.

While it had previously been rumoured that this would include a musical tribute, Barbra is notoriously reluctant to sing live in public these days, so we took the rumours with a pinch of salt.

However, the icon made a rare exception for her beloved co-star, concluding the tributes with a short blast of The Way We Were’s signature song, which won the Oscar for Best Original Song back in 1974.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after Barbra’s performance, and that apparently includes those watching along at home…

Before her performance, Barbra recalled: “After I read the first script of The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role and that was Robert Redford. But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone and didn’t stand for anything. And he was right.

“So, many drafts later, Bob finally agreed to do it. He was a brilliant, subtle actor, and we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in a scene. And I’m thrilled that The Way We Were is now considered a classic love story – but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late 40s and early 50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths.”

She continued: “Bob had real backbone – on and off the screen. 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, and won the Academy Award for Best Director. And I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me. He’d call me ‘Babs’, and I’d say, ‘Bob, do I look like a Babs? I’m not a Babs’. But the way he said it made me laugh.

“Many years later, we were chatting on the phone about the usual – politics, art, our favourites – and as we were hanging up, he said, ‘Babs, I love you dearly and I always will’. And in the last note I ever wrote to Bob, I ended it with, ‘I love you, too’. And I signed it ‘Babs’.”

Check out the full list of winners from this year’s Oscars here.