On Tuesday, iconic singer and actress Barbra Streisand released her nearly 1,000-page memoir, My Name is Barbra. She dedicated her work to “the father I never knew and the mother I did.”
In her book, Streisand speaks of her childhood. She lost her father at only 15 months old. Her mother was always cold and unsupportive. Growing up, she wasn’t sure if her mother loved her.
This caused Streisand to become unhappy with herself. She described her father’s absence as a void in her life. In school, she was the “girl with no father and a good voice.”
She recalls harmonizing with the other students at 5 years old and knowing she was good. A couple of years later, at 13, Streisand’s mother paid for her to make her record.
She then started playing at nightclubs, where she met her longtime manager, Marty Erlichman, at 19. He got her a contract with Columbia Records. Streisand didn’t have many requests and “did not care about the money,” but she demanded full creative control.
It was the start of a long and fulfilling career for Streisand, selling over 150 million records worldwide.
She later became an actress, which was more enjoyable for her than singing. She has performed and directed in iconic movies such as Funny Girl, A Star Is Born and Yentl. Through her work, she achieved EGOT status – winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
In her memoir, she writes about the hardships that came with her career. While she loved her show Funny Girl, she found that doing the same show week after week was boring her.
“It was a prison sentence to me,” she recalled.
Funny Girl also led her to have severe stage fright that affects her to this day. She writes about how her co-star, Sydney Chaplin, would throw her off with flirtations during her performance. It drove her into therapy, and she developed a fear of performing live.
Then, she started to get labeled as “difficult to work with.”
“If he acts, produces, and directs, he’s called a multi-talented hyphenate. She’s called vain and egotistical,” Streisand writes in her memoir.
She was also heavily criticized for the way that she looked.
As a young woman, people suggested she “do something about her nose” as she advanced in her career.
Streisand didn’t want to. She thought it made her look unique and picked a photo that got the bump on her nose right for the cover of her memoir.
In 2020, she made headlines for giving Disney stock to George Floyd’s daughter during the BLM protest movement.
