5 ‘The Way We Were’ Behind-the-Scenes Secrets You Didn’t Know
What To Know
- The Way We Were was a romantic drama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford and was released on October 19, 1973.
- Streisand has been in talks to perform at the 2026 Oscars to honor her late costar.
- The actress revealed a number of behind-the-scenes secrets in her memoir.
The Way We Were isn’t just one of the best romance movies of all time — it’s one of the best movies ever made. Katie and Hubbell’s timeless story of love and sacrifice has left viewers riveted for over 50 years. Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford‘s spectacular chemistry is the gold standard.
Streisand has reportedly been in talks to perform at the Oscars to pay tribute to Redford, who died in September 2025 at 89. Since we’re all thinking about The Way We Were again (but when have we ever truly stopped?), Swooon has five facts about the film that may surprise you. Streisand didn’t hold back in her memoir, My Name Is Barbra, and she spilled all the details about filming The Way We Were.
1. Robert Redford initially turned down the role of Hubbell.
From the get-go, Streisand wanted Redford to play Hubbell. When Redford turned down the role at first, director Sydney Pollack was equally as persistent as Streisand in trying to convince Redford to change his mind. According to Streisand, Redford was “concerned that the script was so focused on Katie that Hubbell’s character was underdeveloped,” which she agreed with.
Streisand wanted Redford in the role of Hubbell so much that she told Pollack to write more scenes for Redford to make the movie equal and “pay him whatever he wanted.” Redford continued to say no to the project. “The negotiations went down to the wire,” Streisand wrote in her memoir, but he eventually agreed. She found out that he had accepted the role while filming a movie in Africa.
2. Barbra Streisand was sick during the first weeks of filming.
The Oscar winner had contracted a parasite in Africa while filming Up the Sandbox. “I couldn’t keep food down. It was so awful. I was so skinny my legs looked like toothpicks. I weighed 115 pounds, which actually worked well for a college student,” she wrote.
3. The iconic moment of Katie brushing Hubbell’s hair back wasn’t scripted.
Streisand recalled the first time Katie brushed Hubbell’s hair out of his face, when they crossed paths seven years after they graduated from college. “Bob had this shock of hair that fell over his forehead, and as we did the scene, it seemed perfectly natural for me to brush it back from his eyes. It wasn’t in the script… it was just something I felt like doing, in the moment,” she wrote.
Everett Collection
Those watching the dailies loved the gesture, and Streisand made a note to do it a “few more times in the story” where it made sense. And she did, the most memorable time being outside The Plaza Hotel.
4. The original version of “The Way We Were” song is different from the final version.
Composer and producer Marvin Hamlisch played the original melody in Streisand’s living room, and she knew right away that changes needed to be made. She worked with Hamlisch to fine-tune the song. Cowriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman also changed some of the lyrics before the final version was recorded. Streisand noted in her memoir that she hummed over the introductory bars of the recording to “clear my voice and warm up.” Pollack loved the humming so much and “thought it was perfect for the title sequence.”
5. The ‘crux’ of The Way We Were was cut from the film.
Two specific scenes were cut from the original version, which Streisand deemed a “devastating loss.” One scene was after Katie and Hubbell’s projection room blow-up, when Katie drives through the UCLA campus and sees a girl making a speech about supporting faculty members who refuse to take a loyalty oath. Katie stops to listen to the girl. This was a scene Streisand “thought was the very definition of the title, The Way We Were. It’s about looking back at your past and remembering the way you were.”
The second scene that Streisand was upset about involved Katie and Hubbell in their Malibu living room. Hubbell brings up that Frank McVeigh has informed on Katie, and the House Un-American Activities Committee has accused her of trying to get the studio to make a subversive film. She’s not going to name names if she’s called before the committee, and Hubbell doesn’t want her to. This leads Katie to let Hubbell go and stay true to herself. “She can’t stay in Hollywood. But she knows that Hubbell, to the contrary, belongs there,” Streisand said.
The Frank McVeigh portion of the conversation never made it into the film, which Streisand believed was “the climax of the story.” She added, “Without that scene and the UCLA scene, the plot is eviscerated, and we’ve lost the essence of her character, as well as his… because Hubbell’s lines show he was prepared to stand by her.” Those two scenes were “the crux of the film,” and leaving them out hurt the movie as a whole, according to Streisand.
