heartthrobs

Jane Fonda Says She Fell in Love with Robert Redford on Every Film

The pair just made their fourth movie together.

In 1967, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford co-starred in Barefoot in the Park as Paul and Corie Bratter, a young couple figuring out newlywed life in a fifth-floor walk-up in New York City. Fonda was just starting out in her career when she made Barefoot and two other films with Redford, and as she told Ellen DeGeneres Monday, she was infatuated with the star. The pair have just wrapped their fourth film, Netflix’s Our Souls at Night, and Fonda said the dynamics between her and her leading man have slightly shifted since they last worked together.

“I realize that I’ve grown up, because in the three previous movies, I was always in love with him,” she told DeGeneres. “I fell in love every time, so if a day went by when he wouldn’t speak to me . . . there were days when he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was part of the script. I always took it personally: ‘What if he doesn’t like me? I did something wrong.’ ”

Now, nearly four decades since The Electric Horseman, her last film with Redford, Fonda says she calls out her co-star when he’s grumpy on set.

“And now, if he doesn’t speak to me, I just say, ‘Hey, Bob, what? Come on. What are you . . . What?’ ”

Though she might be far less intimidated by Redford than in those early days, Fonda told DeGeneres that she still finds him dreamy.

“The only problem with working with Bob is that I just look into his . . . I kind of fall into his eyes and forget my dialogue,” she said. “God so good looking.”

Meryl Streep, another of Redford’s leading ladies, weighed in on the film-legend’s eyes in a 2012 interview with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. When Cohen displayed a photo of a bespectacled Redford onscreen, Streep quipped, “Yeah, take off your glasses!”

Redford isn't the only one who can claim Fonda’s heart with a glance. The actress told DeGeneres that she also falls under a spell when she looks into the talk-show hosts’s entrancing eyes.

“You don't know what it‘s like to be up here and look into her eyes . . . It‘s much harder to look into her eyes and not. . .”

“Fall in love?” DeGeneres teased.

Yeah,” Fonda sighed.