Barbra Streisand on the cover of her album Higher Ground Barbra Streisand (born April 24, American singer and film actress, producer, and director.
She was born Barbara Joan Streisand in Brooklyn, New York and educated at Beis Yakov School and Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. Her father passed away when she was only fifteen months old, and she had a lifelong turbulent relationship with her stepfather.
Following a music competition, she became a club singer in her teens. She originally had wanted to be an actress, and appeared in a number of off-off-Broadway productions, including one with then-aspiring actress Joan Rivers, but when her boyfriend Barry Dennen helped her shape a club act _ first performed in a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village - she became a smashing success as a singer. She signed to Columbia Records in 1962 and her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, won two Grammy Awards in 1963. From 1962 she also appeared on Broadway, first in the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale and then as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1964). She built on her success with a number of television specials for CBS.
Her first film was a reprise of her Broadway hit, Funny Girl (1968), for which she won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actress, sharing it with Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter), the first time ever there was a tie in an Oscar category. Her next two movies were also based on musicals, while her fourth film was based on a Broadway play. She also starred in the original screwball comedies What's Up, Doc? (1972), with Ryan O'Neal, and For Pete's Sake (1974), and the hugely successful drama The Way We Were with Robert Redford.
In 1970 she had a topless scene in The Owl and the Pussycat. She quickly regretted the move and bought up all prints of the film, deleting the scene. When High Society magazine published the original photos of her bare breasts, Streisand sued them.
Over the years, Streisand has won two Oscars, five Emmys, and eight Golden Globes, as well as a number of other awards. Her second Academy Award was as composer of the song "Evergreen", from A Star Is Born (1976). In 1995 she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
She has produced a number of her own films, setting up Barwood Films in 1972. For Yentl (1983) she was producer, director, writer, and star, an experience she largely repeated for The Prince of Tides (1991). Steven Spielberg called Yentl a masterpiece, and many critics praised the film as well as Prince of Tides, leading to much controversy when she never received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Some claimed that her well-known uncompromising, tough behavior was to blame for the shutout, while others felt that Hollywood was punishing her for being a woman, and if a man behaved the same way, he would have been given recognition.
She has recorded more than sixty albums, after her early work in the 1960s (The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, My Name Is Barbra, etc.) Many were soundtrack albums from her films.
During the seventies, she was also highly prominent in the pop charts, with No 1 records like THE WAY WE WERE, EVERGREEN, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and finally,as the eighties emerged, WOMAN IN LOVE.
When the seventies ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the US, with only Elvis and The Beatles having sold more albums.
At the end of the last millenium, she still was the No 1 female singer in the states, with No 1 albums in each decade since she had started out.
In 1991 she released a 4-album box set, entitled Just for the Record. A separate disc, entitled "Highlights from Just for the Record" featured two dozen tracks, including live material, greatest hits, rarities and otherwise, from her early recordings up to 1991.
Around 1992, however, success was not in Barbra's favor. She was losing money, and sought advice from former boyfriend Dennen. He suggested she perform in a series of live concerts, not only for financial reasons, but to overcome her chronic stage fright, as well. The tour was one of the biggest all-media merchandise parlays in history. Dennen later wrote a book called My Life with Barbra.
She was married to Elliott Gould from 1963 to 1971, with whom she had her only child, son Jason Gould (who later appeared as her son in The Prince Of Tides). She briefly dated Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the early 70s, had long-term relationships with hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters and tennis player Andre Agassi, and later married actor James Brolin in 1998.
On New Years Eve 1999 she returned to the concert stage, scoring another personal triumph for giving the highest grossing single concert in Las Vegas history to date. She later toured Australia with that programm, called TIMELESS.
In December 2004 she had a procedure to remove polyps from her colon.
With President Bill Clinton Streisand is known for her outspoken liberal political views, and is a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party.
Her strong, larger-than-life personality was satirized on the South Park animated series in an episode called "Mecha-Streisand", in which she tried to take over the world by transforming herself into a giant robot.
In 2004, Streisand returned to the big screen as an actress in the comedy Meet the Fockers, as Dustin Hoffman's wife, with Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, and Blythe Danner. The film debuted at #1 and although the movie as a whole, has received mixed reviews, Streisand and her co-star Dustin Hoffman have garnered very positive reviews. The film has so far grossed 250 million dollars, being the film with the highest take on a christmas weekend to date.
Filmography (selected)
External links - Barbra Streisand Fanclub International (http://www.Streisand-Fanclub.com/)
- Streisand For Everyone (http://www.s4e.info/)
- The Barbra Streisand Archives (http://www.barbra-archives.com/#3.0)
- The Barbra Streisand FAQ (http://www.bjsmusic.com/bjsfaq/#3.0)
- IMDb: Barbra Streisand (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000659/)
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