Barbra Streisand Barbra Streisand is a singer, actress, director, producer, and composer who has won multiple awards but has made as much of an impression with her personality as with her work. Politically outspoken, she also campaigns to raise funds for several charities. Barbra Joan Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Emanuel, was a teacher who died before her second birthday, and she was raised by her mother, Diana Ida Rosen, a former school clerk, and her stepfather, Louis Kind. She has a half brother, Sheldon Jay, and a half sister, the singer Rosalind Kind who appeared in the film Ghost of a Chance with Shelley Long. Although Barbra herself demonstrated musical talent at an early age, her mother discouraged her, famously telling her that she wasn't pretty enough to go into the performing arts. She worked hard at Erasmus Hell High School and graduated fourth in her class, but her real love was singing, and she was a member of the school choir alongside Neil Diamond.
After finishing school, Streisand was determined to become an actress, and she appeared in several minor theatrical productions, including one with Joan Rivers. However, when her then boyfriend Barry Dennen (now a successful writer and actor who appeared in Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio) suggested that she try singing as part of a nightclub act, she became an overnight success. Her debut recording, The Barbra Streisand Album, won two Grammy awards. By the end of the 1970s she was considered to be the most successful female singer in the USA. She has released more than sixty albums and is the highest paid concert performer in history. In 1995 she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Streisand continued to appear in theater, making a splash on Broadway in the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale, and her big break in Hollywood came when she reprised her theater role in Funny Girl, based on the life of Fanny Brice, winning a Best Actress Oscar in the process. She went on to appear in films such as Hello Dolly!, with Walter Matthau and Michael Crawford; A Star is Born, with Kris Kristofferson although Streisand's first choice for the role was actually Elvis Presley; and All Night Long, with Gene Hackman, Diane Ladd, and Dennis Quaid. Before long she was ready to try her hand at directing, with work including Yentl, with Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving; The Prince of Tides, with Nick Nolte; and The Mirror Has Two Faces, with Jeff Bridges, Lauren Bacall, Pierce Brosnan, and Mimi Rogers. Both Yentl and Prince of Tides received multiple Oscar nominations, with Steven Spielberg calling the former a masterpiece, but there was controversy over the fact that Streisand was never nominated for Best Director, a fact which many ascribed to sexism in the industry. In 1969 she formed the First Artists Production Company with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier to help secure the rights of actors to develop their own projects.
Alongside her film and music careers, Streisand made numerous television appearances, most of them in variety shows and singing specials. She has won six Emmy awards. Streisand has been married twice; her first husband was Elliot Gould, who starred in Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney, and by whom she had a son, Jason Gould, an actor known for his performance in Say Anything... with John Cusack and Ione Skye. She is now married to actor James Brolin, himself the father of Josh Brolin, who starred in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. In the past she was also romantically linked to Ryan O'Neal, Warren Beatty, Pierre Trudeau, Don Johnson, Andre Agassi, and Peter Jennings. YUDDY |
