Jane Fonda Still Has the Hots for Robert Redford

Jane Fonda paid tribute to her late four-time co-star Robert Redford at the opening-night screening of Barefoot in the Park. The film opened the TCM Classic Film Festival this year. Fonda remembered Redford’s warmth and his commitment to diversity and complexity in the movies, but most of all she remembered how freaking hot he was. “I met him on The Chase,” she said of the 1966 film that began a decadeslong collaboration. “We were both married, and I asked him, ‘Do you ever have affairs?’ And he had this weird answer. He said, ‘Well, if I was gonna have an affair, it would be with somebody that was like a hooker.’” Despite playing a sex worker in Klute, Fonda apparently wasn’t “like a hooker” enough to tempt Redford.

Fonda said she and Redford first bonded over rocks. Literal rocks, as both were in the middle of building houses with stone walls. “He was married to Lola, who was studying to be an architect,” she said. “Bob was in Hollywood to make this movie with me, but he really wanted to be in Utah building stone walls. And I was married to a Frenchman, and I had just built a house out in the country and I was building stone walls. And so we had such a good time talking about stacking stones.” Using moss as insulation also came up. Fonda said Redford loved to climb, once scaling the big spire of Westwood’s Fox Theater and breaking his arm climbing up his chimney one Christmas. 

Fonda also spoke about Redford’s commitment to indie filmmaking with the Sundance Institute and Film Festival. She took a moment to slam Skydance and its acquisition of Paramount and Warner Bros. — a ballsy move as Paramount’s Barefoot in the Park was on loan to the festival care of Ellison & Co.

But it always came back to Redford’s foxiness for Fonda. Host Ben Mankiewicz noted that Fonda was staying to watch a movie, a rarity in Hollywood. “I want to look at him some more,” she explained. And look she did. When the first makeout scene (of many) began, Fonda could be heard letting out a feral yawp of appreciation. That’s the kind of enthusiasm we should all look for in our work, no?