On paper, it seems like Barbra Streisand has it all - acclaim,
respect and all the perks that come with being a legendary performer. But the path
to success and happiness wasn't easy. These are the tragic details about the star's life.
Barbra Streisand's scholarly father, Emanuel Streisand,
died at just 35 years old, when the future star was 15 months old.
Emanuel's untimely death understandably left a gaping hole in Barbra and her family's lives,
with the star telling People in 1983 -
"I always felt I never had a father. There wasn't even a picture of us
together. Only his books down in the cellar, tied up with string."
This fact made Barbra Streisand stand out among her peers,
as she once explained to Oprah Winfrey -
"I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father."
But just because Emanuel wasn't physically present throughout his famous daughter's life doesn't mean
he didn't influence her. Revealing to Winfrey that she visited a medium who claimed to be able to,
quote, "call up" their father, on her brother's suggestion, Streisand said -
"For 39 years, I hadn't even visited my father's grave. So first,
I went there and took a picture with my arm around his tombstone. It's the only
picture I have with him. Then we met with the woman, and let me tell you, the table moved."
Feeling, quote, "totally connected" to her father,
the experience led Streisand to take the plunge and direct her movie "Yentl."
"And there were many things that I never could say to my father.
I was proud to be his daughter, I was proud to bear his name.”
After her husband died, Streisand's mom Diana pretty much checked out
from her family, with Barbra telling People -
"Emotionally my mother left me at the same time — she was in her own trauma."
Speaking to the Daily Mail, she further described her mother's mental health by saying -
"Prozac dulls your senses. When my mother was on it she forgot to be angry. She had dementia
as well and she forgot that she was always very angry, but that pill really helped."
Still, Barbra doesn't resent her mother, who she understands was unhappy.
"My mother meant well. And she never hugged me or said,
'I love you.' I'm more of a toucher than my mother."
Instead of being overly affectionate, Diana used food to establish a connection with her daughter.
As "The Way We Were" star explained to Oprah Winfrey -
"For her, love was food. When I graduated early from high school and moved out of the house at 16
to study acting, she would schlep to my place to bring me half a cantaloupe and some chicken soup."
Diana Streisand Kind died in 2002 at the age
of 93 in Los Angeles. At the time, Barbra Streisand's publicist stated -
"The daughter of a cantor, she had a beautiful singing voice,
a legacy passed on to her daughters."
After her father died, Streisand went to live in her maternal grandparents'
too-small Brooklyn apartment with her mother, Diana, and her older brother,
Sheldon, according to People. Talking to Oprah about the experience, Barbara said -
"My grandmother and grandfather slept in one room,
and my mother and I slept in another with my brother sleeping next to us on a cot.
We didn't have a living room, so we didn't have a couch, which is probably why I love couches now."
Speaking to People, Streisand further stated -
"I never had a bedroom to myself until I was 16."
Although young Streisand's living conditions weren't ideal, she still speaks fondly of her
Brooklyn origins, saying in a statement before a 2012 homecoming concert in the borough -
"I'm so glad I came from Brooklyn — it's down to earth. I guess you can come home again."
Her grandparents' apartment on Pulaski Street was
also where Streisand first discovered she could sing.
Streisand's mother, Diana, remarried when the star was seven years old,
apparently without warning, as she told Oprah -
"My mother never actually told me she had remarried. And later,
she didn't tell me she was pregnant, either. I'm convinced this is why
I cannot stand to be lied to. I can take any truth; just don't lie to me."
Not only was the arrival of this new stepfather,
Lou Kind, into the Streisands' life totally unexpected, but he apparently
also actively disliked young Barbra, in spite of her best efforts to be accepted by him.
"I tried to make him like me for a while. I tried calling him Dad and
got him his slippers at night when he came in. I'd get down on my belly and crawl so I didn't
walk in front of the TV while he watched wrestling. But did he like me? No way."
Streisand's brother, Sheldon, echoed this sentiment, telling People -
"He was really mean to Barbara."
He then went on to describe how Kind often pitted Barbra against her half-sister,
Roslyn, who was born from her mother's second marriage, saying -
"He taunted her continually, telling her how plain she was compared to Roslyn."
Barbra Streisand was undeniably talented even at a young age, and she wanted to be an actor. But
her mother, Diana, had other plans for the future star, wanting her to become a secretary instead,
according to People, and explaining that she wished for Barbra to have security in her life,
rather than the uncertainty of show business. Barbra told Oprah -
"She didn't encourage me to become an actress — maybe she didn't want
me to experience rejection. She never thought I would make it."
But as Streisand learned later on, her mother's reluctance to her creative career aspirations
was deeper than that: she was apparently jealous of her success. Streisand explained -
"I remember one Christmas when I was doing 'Funny Girl,' she went nuts. With tears running down her
face, she closed her eyes and said, 'Why is Barbra getting all the presents? Where are my presents?'
That's when I realized she wanted to be famous, too."
Speaking to the Daily Mail in 2018,
Streisand revealed that she had forgiven her mother for her shortcomings, saying -
"She had dreams of her own and she wanted to be a singer.
She was jealous, and that was staggering for me to learn."
Streisand's love life was
never straightforward until she met her husband of over 20 years, actor James Brolin. Previously
married to actor Elliot Gould between 1963 and 1971, Streisand and her first husband had a son
together named Jason, but the relationship wasn't meant to last. Speaking to People,
Gould explained that Streisand had asked him why they had drifted apart, revealing -
"And the answer to that is that we didn't grow together and the reason for that was
because she became more important than us. Then I also said to her,
'We did great. We made it very fast and nobody has what we have. There's you and me and our kid.'"
Streisand also dated other high-profile people, including former Canadian Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau and Jon Peters, a producer. Her relationship with the latter was pretty
tumultuous, if we can trust the words of a former colleague who spoke to People, and claimed -
"He's a predator. Sharp, imaginative and vulgar. But he's been important to Barbra because he's
said no to her. They fought like tigers. Most of the time they lived on an adrenaline high."
They both allegedly resorted to violence toward each other throughout their relationship,
which ended when Streisand went to England to film "Yentl."
Lastly, though Streisand's relationship with Brolin has been mostly positive and happy,
the couple isn't immune to some pretty nasty rumors,
like a misleading National Enquirer piece that falsely suggested Brolin had cheated on his wife.
Barbra Streisand's nose is almost as famous as she is, but people haven't
always been kind about this distinctive feature of hers, as she told Refinery29 -
"At the beginning of my career, I kept hearing, 'Why don't you fix your nose?'"
The subtext was that it made her look,
quote, "too Jewish," the principle of which the actor and singer doesn't understand, adding -
"Jewish people can have all sorts of noses. I happen to like my nose,
and I'm proud of my Jewish identity."
There seem to have been times when Streisand considered modifying her nose
to fit the beauty standards of the time, but she was too scared, telling Oprah -
"As for my nose, I was afraid of the pain. And how could I trust a
doctor's aesthetic sense? How would I know he wouldn't take too much off?"
In the end, it was all for the best,
and Streisand wouldn't change a thing about her nose, bump and all.
During a "Carpool Karaoke" segment on "The Late Late Show" in 2018,
host James Corden pointed out that Barbra Streisand didn't perform at one point for
27 years due to stage fright. When asked if she still gets nervous these days, she said -
"I don't get nervous-nervous,
but I don't enjoy it. I don’t [...] I get scared. I just don't want to disappoint people."
But Streisand has found something that
helps her overcome her terrible stage fright, telling Oprah -
"One reason I can perform now is that they have pills for stage fright.
I wish somebody had told me about these pills years ago."
It also very much depends on where she's performing — and
some situations are more conducive than others.
"I can sing before a full stadium because it's like
looking into a black hole. I can't perform in front of a few people in a living room."
The multi-Grammy Award winner went on to describe a time when she was with Donna Karan
and Liza Minnelli, and the latter was able to sing right then and
there — leaving Streisand to wonder how she could be so comfortable doing that.
Over the years, Streisand has built up a reputation as a diva, being called, quote,
"bossy and demanding," according to the Harvard Business Review.
"You came on time, you were very polite to my crew, you came to rehearsal,
you were nice to everybody - what have you done with Barbra Streisand?"
But the iconic actor-singer-director has a serious bone to pick with those terms,
which she powerfully denounces as pretty obviously
sexist. Noting that men would never be called those things, Streisand added -
"I addressed this double standard in a speech years ago when I said,
'A man is commanding; a woman is demanding. A man is forceful; a woman is pushy.
He's assertive; she's aggressive. He strategizes; she manipulates.'"
Streisand has also seen many ill-intentioned people wanting her to fail in the industry — which
she thinks is why some of them might invent such wild rumors about her, telling Oprah -
"One story was that I walk into a room full of musicians, and if a guy plays the wrong note,
I fire him. It's all just diva crap. I'm a normal person. Why would I fire a musician
because he played the wrong note? If I sing the wrong note, do I get fired? It's absurd."
In addition to dealing with those negative behavioral rumors, when asked by the Harvard
Business Review in 2012 if she felt there was less sexism in Hollywood now than when
she first started out back in the 1960s, Streisand gave a pretty depressing answer.
"Frankly, I'm not sure how much has changed. Women aren't paid as much as men,
and it's still difficult to get films made. Making 'Yentl' in England was wonderful, because they
were used to seeing women in powerful positions. [...] Strong women weren't a threat to them."
Despite this, the movie still took 14 years from when Streisand had the idea for it
to make it onto the big screen — a delay which the star credits
to sexism and female directors not being given the same chances as men.
This experience clearly marked Streisand, who spoke further about the discrimination
she felt when making "Yentl" at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. Revealing that there
were a lot of men and older people who acted as gatekeepers when she was
trying to get the green light for the movie, she also touched on some of the
internalized sexism she experienced from women when "Yentl" came out, explaining -
"None of [the female critics] talked about what the movie was trying to say.
It was not about what the movie was about — a celebration of women and all they could be."
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