Given Robert Redford and Jane Fonda’s on-screen chemistry in several films together over 60 years, it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t any off-screen romance, but it wasn’t for any lack of feeling, according to Fonda.
“I was always in love with Robert Redford,” Fonda told The Guardian in 2015. “I made three films with him and nothing happened because I was married and he was married.”
Redford and Fonda actually made five films together together, between 1960 and 2017. And though they never privately acted on that “love” Fonda said she felt, the two stars enjoyed one of the sweetest and most enduring friendships in Hollywood, according to People.
Fonda addressed that friendship, as well as her grief in a statement Tuesday, after learning of Redford’s death at age 89.
“It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone,” Fonda said in a statement to Indiewire. “I can’t stop crying. He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”
The actor, director, and Sundance Film Festival founder died in his sleep at his home outside Provo, Utah Tuesday. Tributes soon began pouring in from many luminaries in the entertainment industry and beyond, including from Jake Tapper, Hillary Clinton, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and even Donald Trump.
Some of his other famous co-stars also expressed sadness about the loss of the Hollywood icon, who starred in and directed such classic films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Candidate,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “The Sting,” “All the President’s Men” and “Ordinary People.”
“One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend,” Meryl Streep, who also shared romantic scenes with Redford in “Out of Africa” in 1985.
Meanwhile, Redford and Fonda’s collaboration went back to 1960, when they both made their movie debut in the college love story, “Tall Story.” She starred in the film while he had an uncredited role as a basketball player. They worked together again 1966’s “The Chase,” playing estranged lovers, then reunited for what would become their most famous pairing, playing opposites-attracts newlyweds in “Barefoot in the Park,” a film adaptation of the Neil Simon play.
In the 1970s, they starred again together in the western comedy-drama, “The Electric Horseman.”
In 2008, Fonda admitted in an interview with People that she had a crush on Redford during every movie they did together. She said: “He is so handsome and just such a wonderful human being. Every movie I made with him, I developed a crush on him.”
After Fonda told The Guardian in 2015 that she had always been “in love” with Redford, he laughingly told The Telegraph several years later: “I didn’t know she was in love with me!”
The two continued to praise each other in interviews to promote their last on-screen pairing, the 2017 Netflix romantic drama, “Our Souls at Night.”
“In Barefoot in the Park, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him,” Fonda said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I was constantly forcing myself on him. In ‘Our Souls at Night,’ the dynamic of my character to his character was somewhat similar. I just love the fact that these films bookend our careers.”
“We played that young love just getting married (in Barefoot) and now we play old people love and old people sex,” Fonda continued. “I live for sex scenes! He’s a great kisser. It was fun to kiss him in my 20s and then to kiss him again in my almost-80s.”
For his part, Redford said during interviews to promote “Our Souls at Night” that it was “easy” working with Fonda. He also called her “a force.”
“One of the things I really like about Jane that’s manifested in this film is that she really is a force,” the actor said on the “Today” show. “As long as I’ve known Jane she’s always moving forward, and doesn’t look back. And whatever pain, whatever problems she’s had in the past, remains in the past and she keeps moving forward. It’s an admirable quality and very few people have it like Jane does.”
As always, Fonda was eager to gush about Redford’s looks, charm and shared interests.