Biography

Biography

   I first heard her at the age of nine, I guess. My father had just come from Belarus and brought Hello,Dolly! on video. Videos had just been introduced to the Russian public. Video wasn’t available to everyone at that time. So we were lucky to have it. My father said, ”Here you will see a beautiful and a very talented actress named BARBRA STREISAND.” I didn’t know her. But I was anxious to see her from the moment the movie started.

    First the choir was singing. Then a woman dressed in a long red gown appeared. She was walking along the street. But I couldn’t see her face: the camera was showing only her back. I couldn’t wait anymore to see her face. Feelings overwhelmed me. And then ... she turned around. An instant ... and I was in love with her, with her looks. Then she started to sing, and that terrific, luscious, bell-like voice filled the room. There was no escape from it. I thought I was going crazy! I didn’t know anything about her. The only thing I knew was: hey, I adore that lady!

    I have become a Barbra-addict. She’s like drugs, you know. Once you tasted, you can’t quit: she sucks!

"Did you ever hear Helen Morgan sing ?..

Were you ever at the theater when Fanny Brice clowned in her classic comedic way-or when Beatrice Lillie deliciously poked fun at all sham and pomp ?..

Have you ever heard our top vocalists “belt” , ”whisper” or sing with that steady and urgent beat behind them?..

Have you ever seen a painting by Modigliani?..

If you have, do not think the above has been ballooned out of proportion.

I advise you to watch Barbra Streisand’s career. She has a stunning future.

Keep listening, keep watching.

And please remember, I told you so..."

Harold Arlen.

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror at her house on Pulaski Street at the age of two and a half. She picked up a tube of lipstick and drew red slashes across her cheeks and forehead. Then she smeared it all over her face. Hers was not pretty face: her head was too large, her nose had begun to grow in disproportion to her face. She immediately became the target of jokes and mockings — “Big beak”, they called her, and “cross-eyes”, and “mieskeit” (a Yiddish word for an ugly person).

Who would’ve thought that this “mieskeit” would become the greatest superstar ever to shine in Hollywood?!

For her very first Broadway appearance in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, she won the New York Drama Critics Award and received a Tony nomination. For her very first record album she won two 1963 Grammy Awards. One of these was Album of the Year, and, at that time, she was the youngest recipient. For her very first television special, My Name Is Barbra, she was honored with an Emmy Award in 1965. For her motion picture debut in Funny Girl, she won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actress. With Yentl in 1983, she became the first woman ever to produce, direct, write, and star in a major motion picture. She is the first female composer ever to win an Academy Award, this for her song, "Evergreen," the love theme from her hit film, A Star Is Born. The first woman to receive a Best Director nomination from the Directors Guild of America for The Prince of Tides.

The "actress who sings," as she once termed herself, has repeatedly been at the top of the record sales charts. With 48 gold, 28 platinum, and 13 multi-platinum albums, she is third in the all-time charts, with only Elvis earning more and is the only female artist to have collected 13 multi-platinum albums.

Recipient of an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters from Brandeis University in 1995, she is a rare honoree, the only artist to earn Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace, and Peabody Awards.

Her name is BARBARA JOAN STREISAND, the daughter of Diana and Emanuel Streisand. She was born weighing 7 lbs. 5 ozs. net at 5:04 a.m. Friday, April 24, 1942 in the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn. She received her name from her grandmother Anna’s sister (Barbara is the English equivalent of the Yiddish Berthe).

Emanuel Streisand made a decent living as a teacher at the Brooklyn High School for Speciality Tracles. That summer Manny accepted an offer to be head counselor at Camp Cascade in Highmont, N.Y. On Wednesday, August 4, 1943, a suffocatingly hot day, Manny felt ill. At 2:45 p.m. Emanuel Streisand was pronounced dead of respiratory failure. He is buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens. That summer Barbara was only 15 months old.

Shattered, depressed and frightened, Diana Streisand sold her furniture, took her belongings and moved with Sheldon and Barbara to her parents’ one-bedroom apartment in the Philip Arms, a four-story brick building at 365 Pulaski Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section. Life wasn't all cream and honey. This is how Barbra described this period of her life, "We didn’t have a couch until I was eight. We had a dining room, we used to sit around the table. My brother slept on a lot that folded out: my mother and I slept in the same bed. I didn’t have luxury. My grandmother, my grandfather, my brother, me and my mom all shared a bathroom. A couch to me was an amazing thing.”

The only good thing about living on Pulaski Street was music that surrounded little Barbara. Her grandfather used to sing traditional religious songs at home every Sabbath and on holidays. Barbara loved to sing. “She started to sing as early as she could talk”, Diana Kind said in an interview. “ She would sit on the stairway steps inside the building and sing songs she’d heard on the radio. Her desire to become an actress overwhelmed her at the age of 5 just around the time she began to watch TV shows with Irving Borokow. In the spring of 1949 she made her first public singing appearance for which she received a real audience’s approval, in the yeshiva’s PTA assembly program.

There couldn't have been a worse moment for Barbara than Saturday, December 23, 1950 when her mother married Louis Kind. On January 9, 1951 their daughter Rosalind (later Roslyn) was born. Kind worshipped his infant daughter. He thought she was the best, the most beautiful baby in the world. And who was Barbara compared to her? “Beauty and the Beast”. Louis Kind was sweet to everyone else but not Barbara. He would yell at her and criticize her in front of her few friends. Louis Kind, who, Streisand has said, never spoke to her except once, when he told her she couldn’t have ice-cream because she was too ugly. Barbara felt as if she were a victim.

As a sort of escapism an honor student at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, the teenage Barbara Streisand plunged into show business. Her fist win on the road to enormous success was at The Lion, a small Greenwich Village gay club. That is when she dropped the second "a" in her name, becoming the one and only Barbra. Though her first recording, containing the songs “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” and “You’ll Never Know”, was done in 1955 at the Nola Recording Studio in Manhattan.

She kept winning at The Lion again and again. After a month in the club Barbra had to retire as an undefeated champion. Her next engagements were at such spots as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel. The Bon Soir gig brought Barbra her first manager, Ted Rozar, and her first agent, Irvin Arthur. On Wednesday, April 5, 1961 Barbra appeared on The Jack Paar Show, which marked her first TV appearance. She sang “A Sleepin’ Bee” and “When the Sun Comes Out”. At the same time she was performing in Caucus Club. That's where she met Marty Erlichman who was so impressed by her opeing night performance that he told her she'd win every major award.

Streisand signed her first Columbia Records contract in 1962, and her debut album called simply Barbra Streisand Album quickly became the nation's top-selling record by a female vocalist. It remained in the Billoard Top 40 for 74 weeks, and 18 months after the release it received gold certification from the Record Industry Association of America, it won the Grammy Award as Album of the Year and Barbra was chosen Best Female Vocalist for this record. Her amazing career as a vocalist began.

On Thursday, March 22, 1962 I Can Get It For You Wholesale opened at the Shubert Theater on West 44 Street. Barbra was cast as a secretary who is not getting very much intention, Miss Marmelstein. She was hilarious and touching. The audience laughed with her, suffered with her, adored her. Brooklyn’s ugly duckling turned into a Broadway’s beautiful swan. Streisand would sing the Miss Marmelstein song again on New Year's Eve in 1999-2000. The show was a breakthrough both in her professional and private life, 'cause one of the actors, Elliot Gould, would soon become her husband.

In October 1962 Barbra was signed to play the legendary Ziegfeld Follies comedienne Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of Funny Girl. Upon its March 26, 1964 opening, the show and its star were major hits, with Barbra's magnificent performance earning her a second Tony nomination.

Meanwhile Barbra signed a 10-year contract with CBS to produce and star in TV specials. The contract gave her complete artistic control. The first special, My Name Is Barbra earned five Emmys, and the following two shows, Color Me Barbra, and A Happening In Central Park, earned the highest critical praise and audience ratings. The first two specials were released on home video 20 years later and became instant top-sellers.

In 1966 London critics voted her the best female lead in a musical for that season.

In 1967 Barbra reprised her role of Fanny Brice in the movie musical Funny Girl, opposite Omar Sharif, which earned her Best Actress Academy Award, as well as the Golden Globe and Star of the Year honors from the National Association of Theatre Owners.

Streisand's next two big pictures were also inspired by hit Broadway musicals. 1969 saw the release of Hello, Dolly! (directed by a legendary song-and-dance man Gene Kelly) and in 1970 she starred in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (directed by Vincente Minnelli) opposite the French singer and actor Yves Montand.

Her next film was a non-musical hilarious adult comedy The Owl And The Pussycat (1970), co-starring George Segal. In 1972 another hilarious hit comedy followed, What's Up, Doc?, which teamed her with Ryan O'Neal and filmed by director Peter Bogdanovich. Later that year Streisand's Barwood Films in association with First Artists released Up The Sandbox, a movie about women's rights movement.

In 1973 Barbra received her second Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her memorable performance of Katie Morosky in The Way We Were, the classic love story co-starring Robert Redford and directed by Sydney Pollack. The movie's theme song (the top single of 1974) propelled her own album, The Way We Were, to the top of the charts and became another Streisand signature song.

In 1974 Barbra returned to comedy in For Pete's Sake about pork-bellies. The same year she made an unusual step and recorded an amazing album of classical songs called Classical Barbra. A year later she returned to Fanny Brice in Funny Lady, opposite James Caan.

1976 marked Barbra's first efforts as a film producer. A contemporary musical A Star Is Born won six Golden Globes, the soundtrack album, topped the charts and the theme song was chosen the Best Song at the Oscars.

In 1979 Streisand re-teamed onscreen with Ryan O'Neal and co-produced the boxing comedy The Main Event. Two years later, she appeared as Gene Hackman's co-star and love interest in All Night Long, replacing another actress.

Her next movie would become a very special moment. Barbra read Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story entitled "Yentl, The Yeshiva Boy" in 1968. It fascinated her and already then she made up her mind to turn it into a film. Only 15 years later, as a result of her passion, persistence, and the position in the film community, her dream came true. Barbra was a star, a co-writer, a director and a producer of Yentl. Filmed on foreign locations, the ambitious project celebrating strong women struggling against traditional prejudices reached the screen. This film opened the doors for many women. Yentl earned five Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Score, as well as a Golden Globe as Best Motion Picture Musical Or Comedy. First-time director Barbra Streisand was honored with a Golden Globe as Best Director, 2 of 10 Golden Globes she has received throughout her career.

Streisand wouldn't appear in a new movie until 1987, when she starred in a drama Nuts. Barbra played a prostitute haunted by her dark childhood experiences. She also produced the powerful drama and composed the score.

Two years before she recorded an outstanding Broadway Album. “This is music that I have great respect for, love for — some of the most beautiful melodies ever written, some of the greatest lyrics ever written, and I'm the lucky person to get a chance to sing them. I've been making lists for this album for a long time. It seems like forever. I love the songs we recorded, and left out as many as those that made the final disc. It's only a self-portrait, I think, in terms of my taste, my integrity. This material is much greater than I am. George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is an American classic. I'm an interpreter. I serve this material as best as I can. I was lucky enough to be able to do the album.” The record was a smash hit. It sold over 3 million copies. Customers were buying up three or four packages at a time. “The Broadway Album” received three Grammy nominations: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocal and Album of the Year, of which only the last wasn't a winner.

In 1991 the world saw the release of The Prince of Tides (my personal favorite), based on Pat Conroy's best-selling novel. A wonderful drama, exploring family relationships, the frustration caused by unfulfilled dreams, the consequences of childhood trauma and the transformative power of forgiveness. Once again, Barbra directed, produced, and starred in the film. The character she plays is a New York psychiatrist working with a Southern family-man, Tom Wingo. They begin a disturbing journey through Tom's memories... The picture got seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Nick Nolte. Streisand became only the third woman ever nominated as Best Director by the Directors Guild of America. Unfortunately the movie and its director were snubbed by the Academy.

The same year Streisand was presented with the Grammy Living Legend Award. And in 1995 she received another special Grammy, a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1994 the world was stunned with the news: Barbra was on tour again after 27 years of absence from the stage. She gave 26 performances across the United States and in London. The tour set box office records with immediate sellouts, all in all it generated over $10.25 million for charities Barbra supports.

Barbra Streisand: The Concert, the critically acclaimed film version of the concerts, became the highest-rated musical event in HBO history, as well as an equally successful home video and double-album. It earned five Emmys, the Peabody Award, and three Cable Ace honors. The album The Concert went triple-platinum, which is exceptionally rare for a double album. The video is officially acknowledged to have gone three times platinum.

The Mirror Has Two Faces, released in November 1996, was the third motion picture directed by Barbra. Co-starring Jeff Bridges and Lauren Bacall, the romantic comedy is a story of an ugly-duckling Columbia University professor Rose Morgan, who undergoes a makeover in order to bring passion into her platonic marriage to a math professor, Gregory Larkin, who can’t cope with any pangs of lust and whose theory of marriage excludes sex.

They’re two people with almost nothing in common, but Fate—in the form of a personal ad and a meddling sister—brings them together. And without physical attraction to complicate matters, Rose and Greg became friends, then spouses. But when two people meet, marry, try to remain celibate and then fall in love—they realize they are courting chaos. The story also explores the mother-daughter relationship, our modern myths of sex and beauty.

"I wanted to examine the complications of relationships...how hard it is, how difficult it is to find people, especially in your middle years," explained Barbra. The story's mother-daughter conflict, integral to the film, partly emerged from Streisand's own life. "When I first read the script, I said, 'I know this mother.'"

Streisand's company Barwood Films has paid great aatention to exploring social, historic, and political issues. Rescuers: Stories of Courage, a series of six dramas, pays tribute to non-Jews who heroically saved Jews from the Holocaust. .

Barwood also helped in bringing to television a drama touching upon military harassment of and repression of the civil rights of gays. It was acknowledged that but for Barbra Streisand, the critically praised Serving In Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story would never have been realized on network television. But... it earned three Emmys and the Peabody Award.

Similarly, Barwood's The Long Island Incident aired in May 1998 - the story of one woman's determined fight to restore her son's health after a tragic shooting and to be elected to Congress to help curb gun violence.

Barbra Streisand's life and art are dedicated to the humanities, as reflected by The Streisand Foundation, which is committed to gaining women's equality, the protection of both human rights, and civil rights and liberties, the needs of children at risk in society, and the preservation of the environment. Barbra is a leading spokesperson, a political activist, a true democrat and fund-raiser for social causes close to her heart, including AIDS, fighting cancer and Alzhaimer's disease (her mother died of it in 2002). Her concern with social issues is reflected not only in the dedications of her personal life, but in the subject matter of the films she has initiated, each of which has addressed some social consideration.

On September 6, 1986 Barbra Streisand performed her first full-length concert in 20 years, raising money for the Hollywood Women's Political Committee. The concert, broadcast on December 27 on HBO, was called One Voice and received enormous acclaim. The money raised helped elect five Democratic Senators. To date, over $10 million have been donated to charities through The Streisand Foundation, which continues to occupy much of Barbra's energy and resources.

Barbra has recently observed that there's nothing more to prove in her career and that she values her private time over the ever-consuming work.

She and actor-director James Brolin married on July 1, 1998. She had met her match in 1996 when her pal Christine Peters (ex-wife of Jon Peters) sat them next to each other at a dinner. (He had had very short hair at that time; it looked like “a bullet with a stubble”)The chemistry was immediate. “I resented the fact that I had to drive to this party to meet him,” Streisand told TV Guide, “because it took me away from my work. And then I talked to him, and he said, ‘I’ll take you home’. I called my editors and said, ‘You can go home.” He was interesting enough for me to let him take me home.” Then she saw him again at another party. It was very unpleasant. So I went home and ate a lot of ice cream and said, ‘I can’t deal with this.’ And my son said to me, ‘Ma, call him’. I did. We went to the movies and during the evening I said to him, ‘This is very awkward.’ We talked very truthfully. Then the next time we went out, he brought me a movie to see. And this was a great test, to see if he would bring me one that I’d like. It was a French movie called The Hairdresser’s Husband.” She liked the picture. Since then they never stopped talking. Referring to 6’4’’ Brolin as her “dream team”, she described him as “very strong and masculine, yet totally unafraid of his feminine side, totally accessible emotionally... He's the yin to my yang, or I'm the yang to his yin.” Friends thought that despite Streisand’s and Brolin’s many past loves and losses, this was a match likely to last. “I think it’s absolutely glorious that these two extraordinary people at this stage of their lives met and fell deeply in love, “ said Cis Corman.

Inspired by her wedding, Barbra recorded an album of love songs, A Love Like Ours, which was released on September 21, 1999. It's a romantic tour de force coupling one of the most beautiful voices of the century with a hand-picked selection of personal love songs.Guest artists on the album include saxophonist Kenny G ("The Island" and "The Music That Makes Me Dance") and country music superstar Vince Gill, who duets with Streisand on "If You Ever Leave Me," (penned by Richard Marx, produced by David Foster and Richard Marx).

Streisand herself produced half the songs on A Love Like Ours, including her rendition of George & Ira Gershwin's "Isn't It A Pity?," "A Love Like Ours" (Alan & Marilyn Bergman and Dave Grusin), "If I Never Met You" (Tom Snow & Dean Pitchford), "Wait" (Alan & Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand), "The Music That Makes Me Dance" (originally written for Funny Girl by Jule Styne & Bob Merrill), and the album's first single "I've Dreamed Of You" (Rolf Lovland & Ann Hampton Callaway).

On December 31, 1999, Barbra's Millennium Concert production called "Timeless" at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas marked her return to live performing. On March 9 & 10 she gave concerts at Sydney Football Stadium. On March 15 & 17 Melbourne warmly welcomed Barbra, who conquered Aussie's hearts long time ago.

In January 2000 the Hollywood Foreign Press Association presented Streisand with its highest honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, for her "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field."

On April 24, 2000 the Library of Congress honored Barbra Streisand among 84 U.S. "Living Legends" as part of its day-long National Bicentennial Birthday Party and Concert. These are the Legends who have contributed significantly to America's cultural, historical, and social heritage.

Barbra Streisand hosted and was an executive producer of a brand-new TV documentary special called Reel Models: The First Women of Film, which premiered on Tuesday, May 30, 2000. The program profiles the cinema's earliest female pioneers - Oscar-winning directors Dorothy Arzner (in whose name Women In Film presented Streisand with a special award in 1992), Lois Weber (actually the very first woman to direct, produce, write, and act in a theatrical feature back in the early silent era), and Alice Guy (a French film pioneer who invented the director's job), and screenwriter Frances Marion (a two-time Oscar winner who penned Garbo's first spoken words).

On August 17 Barbra Streisand performed four songs to close the Nomination Celebration Concert, a giant fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, at L.A.'s Shrine Auditorium. Sharing the bill in front of an audience of 6,000 with emcee Whoopi Goldberg and performers Enrique Iglesias, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Boyz II Men, and Gladys Knight, Barbra reportedly sang "On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)," "Happy Days Are Here Again," "I Believe," and "Somewhere," accompanied by a 100-voice choir.

On September 19 the anticipating fans were finally rewarded with the Timeless—Live In Concert album. The two CDs comprise the best performances and moments from Barbra’s 12/31/99 and 1/1/00 Vegas shows. The album as well as video/DVD were quickly certified as gold and then platinum. Timeless was captured for a Valentine's Day 2001 television special, co-directed by its star, which won four Emmys including one for Streisand's performance.

The end of September. The time has come to say goodbye to live performances. On 21 & 22 Barbra performed at Staple's Senter in Los Angeles, and tha last concerts were given on 27 & 28 in Madison Square Garden. The critics raved, "Streisand has never been so in command, so sure of herself as an artist. ...What makes her show memorable is the sense of history it projects." USA Today's Edna Gundersen praised Barbra's performance. "Streisand held the crowd spellbound during a trend-defying celebration of old-fashioned songcraft and masterful singing. ...Streisand displayed power, control, subtlety and an admirable and rare vocal purity."

It wasn't an average night on Thursday, September 28, at Madison Square Garden. It was a bittersweet farewell Thursday night as Barbra Streisand performed what she said was her last live performance, her swan song. What finale could she choose other than "People", perhaps Barbra's most enduring signature song, which sums everything up. ?! "There's a song that's been there for me since the beginning. I've sung it for 36 or 37 years, and I don't look much older than that, do I? ...Here's to old times, new times, first times, and last times." Nothing could have said it any better. While it may have seemed sad to witness the conclusion of Barbra Streisand's concert career, everyone was smiling, for this happening couldn't have happened in a happier way. She is the greatest star. Now and forever.

December 20, 2000, Constitution Hall saw the largest audience yet for the medal ceremony, according to the First Lady. President Clinton was to present Barbra Streisand the National Medal of Arts. Established by Congress in 1984, it honors individuals and organizations who, in the President's judgment, deserve special recognition for their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States. This year it was presented to 10 artists, an arts patron and a cultural broadcaster, including Maya Angelou, Eddy Arnold, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Benny Carter, Itzhak Perlman.
"We honor these medalists for their extraordinary contributions to the vitality of our nation's cultural life," said President Clinton. "Through their work, they have stimulated our imaginations, celebrated our diversity, tested our beliefs and connected us to each other and our common humanity. They also have helped us recognize the important role of the arts and humanities in our great democracy."

Her next award was American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. The ceremony was held on February 22, 2000 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. The 29th recipient, Streisand is the first female director among a handful of women in film who have been so honored since 1973.

AFI board chairman Howard Stringer issued a statement on Nov. 8 announcing the award recipient. "Barbra Streisand is a living legend who epitomizes the essence of American film," Stringer said. "She is a pioneer in everything she does -- whether it's acting, directing, writing, producing or singing. Over her 40-year career, she has garnered the adulation and respect of the entire creative community as well as the world at large."

AFI's Board of Trustees established its Life Achievement Award on February 23, 1973 to honor an "individual whose career in motion pictures or television has greatly contributed to the enrichment of American culture... and whose work has stood the test of time." Certainly, in the 21st century, her film work continues to stand the test of time with new generations discovering and enjoying it.

Streisand's 57th album, Christmas Memories, was released in October 2001. It's her first seasonal collection since A Christmas Album, which has been certified quintuple-platinum by the RIAA and has re-entered the charts each year since its 1967 release. An album of inspirational music for all seasons, Christmas Memories is "lovingly dedicated" by Barbra Streisand to Stephan Weiss, the husband of designer Donna Karan and a close friend of Streisand's, who passed away in June 2001.

Over the years she has earned the label "legend", but she calls herself a perpetual student, "a work in progress" and continues to seek new challenges, to break new grounds.