It’s shortly after midday, and Barbra Streisand is relaxing. “I just had my coffee and blueberries, and now I’m still in bed, but I’m talking to you,” she says over the phone from her Malibu home. Her “precious little sweetheart” Violet, a fluffy white Coton de Tulear, joins her in the boudoir, as an assistant bustles around in the background, getting lyric sheets and acting as a fact-checker. “Did Jim Henson bring Kermit with him to the recording studio?” Streisand inquired at one point. The answer, unfortunately, is “no”. Streisand, a showbusiness legend and award-winning director, is definitely aware of the impact her mise-en-scene will have. But if she wants to emphasize her diva status, she’s earned it.
At the age of 79, she has two Academy Awards, ten Grammys, nine Golden Globes, five Emmys, a special Tony, and 42 platinum recordings. More importantly, she revolutionized what it meant to be a superstar. Take her singing voice. Streisand’s ability to bend a sentence such that it appears as if she is uttering the lyrics for the first time has inspired generations of performers. More importantly, she redefined what it means to be a female entertainer. When Streisand first began out in the 1960s, she was repeatedly told that she was too ugly to be a celebrity. Against all advice, she refused to have a nose job and went on to become a leading lady.
Following her award-winning performance in Funny Girl, she helped launch First Artists, a production business that allowed stars to make films outside of the studio system. She produced one of her biggest hits, the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, because she admired how her character “owned the feminist spirit” there.
She became the first woman to win best director at the Golden Globes in 1983 with Yentl, the story of an observant Jewish lady who disguises herself as a boy following her father’s death in order to learn the Talmud. It was such a watershed moment that, until Chloé Zhao won the Golden Globe for Nomadland this year, Streisand was the only woman to earn the prize (“I was happy she won,” she says of Zhao’s success). “I wrote her a note.” ) Even at the age of 21, Streisand agreed with Columbia Records to accept less money in exchange for complete creative control.
It was not vital to me to know how much money I’d receive,” she explains. “All I wanted was to sing any song I wanted to.”
