Barbra Streisand: My life hasn't been very enjoyable

 Barbra Streisand: My life hasn't been very enjoyable

Barbra Streisand established a goal for herself when she was 17 years old and living away from home for the first time.

"I have to become famous," she thought to herself, "just so I can get someone else to make my bed."

Recalling those early aspirations, the celebrity chuckles, "I could never figure out those corners."

However, you know, dreaming about fame was more thrilling than the actual experience. I have a very private life. I'm not a fan of celebrity."

She picked up this lesson early on. Newsweek magazine had this to say about her when she arrived in the UK for the first time in 1966.

"Barbra Streisand is a symbol of aura triumphing over looks... Her hips are too big, her nose too long, and her breasts too little. However, she crosses all boundaries of time and culture when she gets in front of the microphone."

From the beginning, the media had an unusual obsession with her beauty. She was dubbed a "myopic gazelle" who had a "unbelievable nose" and was a "amiable anteater".

Only once she rose to fame did the emphasis shift. Streisand became known as the "Babylonian queen" overnight, with superlatives abounding in her biographies: 250 million albums sold, ten Golden Globes, five Emmys, two Oscars, and acting and songwriting honors.

However, the harm had already occurred.

"I'm still hurt by the insults and can't quite believe the praise," the celebrity says in her recently released autobiography, My Name Is Barbra.

She claims that the book is her effort to make things right.

"It was the only way to have some control over my life," she continues.

This is my inheritance. My narrative is mine. After this, I'm not required to perform any further interviews."

Fortunately, she agreed to give the BBC one last interview from the luxury of her Malibu cliffside home. She has a reputation for being late, yet she always arrives on time, even when she has to frantically search for her spectacles at the last minute.

She is everything you could ask for: genuine, witty, kind, a little spoiled, very charming, and sometimes prone to insane outbursts.

She says, "I feel for flowers just like I feel for ants," once. "I can't even crush them."

The writing of Streisand's book took almost twenty-five years. In 1999, she began taking notes by hand, using pencil. The completed document weighs enough to be a weapon and is over a thousand pages long.

The actress says that her "memory is fickle," yet the book is jam-packed with juicy details about confused suitors, backstage fights, and at least one event involving tumbling off a London bus.

She then admits that her marriage to James Brolin served as the idea for Aerosmith's song "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing." She also discusses cloning her favorite dog and checking into hotels under the name "Angelina Scarangella".

She will leave you famished with her exhaustive memory of every dish she has ever had. Melted chocolate cake, pieces of New York pizza, soft-shell crabs, honeydew melon, turkey sandwiches with Branston Pickle, and (her favorite) Brazilian coffee ice cream are just a few of the delectable dishes included in the book.

"I've loved food ever since I had been a kid and lived in the projects," she says. "We had a tiny kitchen and I would love to bake white the cupcakes and put on dark chocolate icing."

Growing up in Brooklyn, Streisand's earliest recollections were singing in her apartment building's stairwells.

"When I was only five or six years old, I used to sing in the lobby with my young female friends. The acoustics have an inherent echo. It sounded fantastic."

But life was difficult at home. When Streisand was 15 months old, her father Emmanuel passed away from a brain hemorrhage, plunging the family into destitution. She embraced a hot water bottle as her bedtime companion when she was younger.

Things did not get much better when her mother got married again a few years later. The secondhand auto dealer who became Streisand's new stepfather was cold and uncaring.

"I can't recall him ever speaking with me or enquiring about anything... How am I doing? Does school go? Everything," she utters.

He never saw me, and neither did my mother. My desire to become an actor was not evident to her. She gave me the blues."

Marilyn Bergman, a songwriter and friend of Streisand's, claimed years later that her early events may have helped lead her into the limelight.

"If you don't have a source of unconditional affection as a child, you will most likely try to attain that for the rest of your life," she said to her.

Streisand says, "That was a brilliant analysis." "Very eye-opening."

"Dollar signs everywhere on you"

After moving out of her parents' house at the age of sixteen, she started working as a clerk and on the weekends as a theater usher to keep up with the newest Broadway productions.

"I got paid $4.50, I think it was as well but I always hid my face because I imagined someday I'd be well-known," she relates.

Isn't that humorous? I didn't want people to see me on TV and remember that I had assisted them in finding their seats in the past."

When Streisand participated in a talent competition at a homosexual nightclub in Manhattan in 1960, the fantasy began to come true. Streisand needed both the free meal and the $50 reward.

A Sleepin' Bee, a Broadway staple, was her opening song. After she was done, there was a startled quiet that was broken by thunderous applause. Comedian Tiger Haynes' girlfriend said to her that evening, "Little girl, I see dollar signs all over you."

She was accurate. Greenwich saw Streisand booked for events that drew stars, record companies, and theatrical moguls. She was employed by one of them, Arthur Laurents, for a little humorous part in the play I Can Get It For You Wholesale.

Although Streisand's solo performance at the premiere allegedly drew a five-minute standing ovation, it was her following part that cemented her as a phenomenon.

Funny Girl was a once-in-a-lifetime union of actress and content, largely based on the life of vaudeville comic Fanny Brice.

Like Streisand, Brice was a young Jewish lady who rose to fame by a combination of perseverance and hard effort; she excelled in spite of, not because of, her peculiarities.

The play, which was fortunate to have hits like People and Don't Rain On My Parade, had great reviews and was nominated for eight Tony Awards. However, Streisand was unable to enjoy her triumph because Sydney Chaplin, her co-star and the son of movie legend Charlie, was always attempting to ruin her performance.

She shakes her head at the recollection and adds, "I don't even like to talk about it."

"It was just this person who had a strange crush on me, and when I told him I didn't want to be involved with you, he turned very cruel on me."

"As I was speaking on stage, he began to grumble to himself. awful phraseology. Curse phrases. And he stopped staring directly into my eyes. It's also crucial to acknowledge and respond to the other person while you're performing.

It confused me. There were moments when I wondered, "What the hell is the next word?" I was so agitated."

The incident aggravated Streisand's stage phobia, which prevented her from performing for 27 years. However, issues arose with male colleagues even after she stopped doing public performances.

When she was filming Hello, Dolly, Walter Matthau embarrassed her by yelling, "I have more talent in my farts than you have in your whole body," while Oscar-winning director Frank Pierson publicly criticized the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, calling Streisand a control freak who insisted on getting closer shots all the time.

Her confidence captivated the guys who didn't feel frightened by it. King Charles called her "devastatingly beautiful" and that she had "great sex appeal," and Omar Sharif begged her in lengthy, impassioned letters to leave her marriage. Marlon Brando also gave her a kiss on the neck to say hello.

"You can't have a back like that and not have it kissed," he says to her.

She says, "I think my heart stopped for a moment," in the book. "What a line!"

"I have the right to sing what I want," says Barbra Streisand

Streisand was unstoppable throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She portrayed screwball heroines in What's Up, Doc and The Owl and the Pussycat, as well as the love lead in the wildly popular The Way We Were, in addition to her cinematic musical roles. With singles like Woman in Love, Evergreen, and No More Tears (Enough Is Enough), she achieved a parallel recording career and went on to become the second-best-selling female musician of all time.

The first Hollywood film in which a woman served as writer, producer, director, and star was Yentl (1983), in which she made her directing debut.

It was a metaphor for sexual equality, about an observant Jewish lady who poses as a boy to study the Talmud. It was made even more hilarious when Streisand was had to cut her acting pay in half, received no compensation for the writing, and was only paid the minimum wage for directing.

But the sexism vanished when she traveled to England for the movie shoot.

"You had a Queen and Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister," she continues. Put otherwise, you didn't find my gender intimidating.

"I must tell you, it was really different in America. The folks seemed distant and chilly."

Streisand seizes the chance to make amends and debunk the stereotype of the "diva" that surrounds her in literature. She does a good job of defending herself, recounting a tale of bravery and tenacity mixed with sardonic humor and self-awareness.

She does, however, sometimes act like a celebrity. For example, she once called Apple CEO Tim Cook to voice her displeasure with the iPhone mispronouncing her name.

"There's no 'Z' in my name," she objects. It's Strei-sand, just like beach sand. How easy can you make it?"

"Tim Cook was also quite charming. He asked Siri to pronounce things differently. That must be one benefit of being famous.

She claims that the book represents the end of her career and is now 81 years old. Her past ten years have been devoted to two film projects that have failed: a Gypsy biography and a biopic of photographer Margaret Bourke-White.

She wants to spend more time at home instead.

Her words, "I want to live life," "I want to climb in my husband's vehicle and go off on a wandering expedition, presumably in the vicinity of the kids.

"Having them over makes life enjoyable for me." We enjoy ourselves as they play with the dogs.

"The reality is, I haven't had a lot of fun in my life. And I'd want to enjoy myself more."