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Barbra Streisand bares all in candid memoir, dives deep into life of success, struggles & love affairs

Synopsis

From romantic entanglements to professional challenges, the memoir delves into Streisand's personal and public journey, offering glimpses into her relationships, behind-the-scenes moments, and even her love for cloned pets

Barbra Streisand reflects on her life in a candid memoir, sharing stories of love, slights, and unique encounters with famous figures.Agencies
Barbra Streisand reflects on her life in a candid memoir, sharing stories of love, slights, and unique encounters with famous figures.
"Looking back, it was much more fun to dream of being famous than to actually be famous," Barbra Streisand writes near the end of 'My Name Is Barbra,' her new memoir. "I didn't like all the ridiculous stories they made up, or the envy my success provoked." Here, culled from the book's 970 pages, is her version of a very examined life, replete with triumphs and slights, love affairs and famous friends, anxiety and antiques and (always) food.

She has plenty to say about the men in her life

-- Streisand lost her father when she was 15 months old, and disliked her stepfather, but was close to her grandfather, "even though he once washed my mouth out with red Lifebuoy soap when I said a bad word. But I knew he loved me. I would sit on his lap and cut the hair out of his ears. That's real intimacy."

-- She met Marlon Brando, her teenage crush, after singing at a benefit, when "suddenly I felt someone kissing my back. Who would dare do that? I turned around and it was him." When she protested, he replied: "You can't have a back like that and not have it kissed." One of his phone signoffs was "I kiss you gently on your inner thigh and on your lips." In the 1990s, he went to visit her for dinner and "he couldn't extract himself from his car," Streisand writes. "He had gained so much weight that he was stuck behind the steering wheel, and I had to grab hold of his arms and pull him out." Later he rubbed her feet and told her about making "On the Waterfront."

-- "Did I sleep with Warren?" she asked herself after a recent phone conversation with Warren Beatty (they go back to when they were in summer stock). "I kind of remember. I guess I did. Probably once."

-- Her first husband and the father of her son, Jason, was Elliott Gould, whom she met when they both appeared in "I Can Get It for You Wholesale." "I wasn't particularly attracted to Elliott, until one day when I happened to see the back of his neck ... and that did it. I'm not sure why. It was just a bit of exposed flesh. Suddenly he became more than a friend."

-- She found Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, "very dapper, intelligent, intense ... kind of a combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (only taller). And he was doing important work. I was dazzled." Later she watched him dive naked into an icy lake and roll around into the snow.

-- Kris Kristofferson, her co-star in "A Star Is Born," also had sex appeal. "He gave me hickeys on my neck. Thank God I had a two-piece bathing suit by Rudi Gernreich with a turtleneck top to hide them!"

-- On dating Don Johnson: "He was the heartthrob of the moment on the TV series 'Miami Vice.' I have to admit, I'm very attracted to attractive men. (OK, so I'm superficial!) It's almost like an aesthetic thing ... like a piece of art. I collect!"

She hasn't forgotten the slights

-- Negativity was her mother's "natural state," and she was too nervous to watch "Funny Girl" on its Broadway opening night. "I don't remember her ever giving me a compliment," Streisand writes. But she did send her daughter negative gossip-column clippings.

-- Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's son), who played Nick Arnstein to her Fanny Brice in the musical, worked to sabotage her performance: "While the audience assumed he was whispering sweet nothings in my ear, he would actually be jeering, 'You really (screwed) up that scene.'"

-- She never forgave Frank Pierson, the director of "A Star Is Born," for a magazine interview in which he took credit for choices she made as the producer, and called the film a "$6 million home movie." "I didn't realize," she writes, "that I was dealing with a pathological liar."

-- She battled with Larry Kramer for decades over adapting his AIDS play, "The Normal Heart," for the screen ("I wouldn't be that graphic in a scene between a man and a woman either! It was about taste"). And she has notes for Ryan Murphy, who eventually directed the movie for HBO.

She likes being behind the camera more than in front of an audience

-- Streisand says she felt trapped doing "Funny Girl" on Broadway ("Now I would have to be onstage doing the same thing every night for 18 months. It was like a prison sentence to me"). But she loved making the movie, especially because she was taken under the wing of its veteran director, William Wyler, who took her input seriously and taught her about camera angles.

-- Blanking on a lyric during her 1967 "A Happening in Central Park" show kept her from singing live in concert for 27 years. "I felt an absolute lack of control," she writes, "and it was terrifying." (OK, there were a few Vegas dates in between.)

-- Among those who attended her 1994 comeback tour: Prince Charles, Sidney Poitier, Gregory Peck, Nancy Pelosi, Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Jackson, Sean Connery, John Travolta, Bill and Hillary Clinton -- and CNN political analyst Bill Schneider. Backstage, Streisand writes, "the first thing I said to him was: 'What the hell is Alan Greenspan doing raising the interest rates?'"

She knows a lot of people

-- In 1960 Streisand was third on the bill at the Bon Soir supper club, and Phyllis Diller was the headliner. After reviewers commented on the ingénue's vintage clothes as if they were a "gimmick," Diller bought her "an expensive cocktail dress," but "it felt wrong on me," Streisand writes. "How could I tell her? She had been so kind, and I was worried about hurting her feelings. But if I wasn't going to wear it, she'd certainly notice, so I had to explain. I asked her if she'd mind if I returned the dress and used the money to buy fabric and have something made. She understood completely. What a relief!"

-- Streisand and Joan Rivers, then Joan Molinsky, were both in a play called "Driftwood." "I thought she was funny ... although the play wasn't a comedy … and so lucky to be from a wealthy family on Long Island. Not only did she have a father, but he was also a doctor! Wow!"

-- She met President John F. Kennedy after singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" for him at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He told her she had a beautiful voice, and she told him, "You're a doll." Almost 20 years later, Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, then working as an editor for Doubleday, approached Streisand about writing a memoir, and they had tea. "I think you have an extremely moving book inside you," Onassis wrote her afterward. "Your book would bring a lot to people, and I think doing it would be very enlightening for you."

-- Streisand met Virginia Clinton, Bill's mother, at the Arkansas Ball, and she became a surrogate mother figure -- so much so that in a picture with Streisand and her actual mother, Virginia is the one holding hands with Barbra.

-- Wait ... Aerosmith's biggest hit, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," written by Diane Warren, was inspired by a piece of James Brolin pillow talk that he and Streisand repeated when talking to Barbara Walters on "20/20"? Who knew?

-- Prince (not the one of Tides) was also a fan of Streisand's. "As an 18-year-old in December 1976, he loved 'A Star Is Born' so much that he saw it six times," she reports. "The poster was the only thing he had hanging on his bedroom wall. He even recorded a demo of 'Evergreen.'"

She hates to cook ... but really loves to eat

"I can burn water," Streisand writes, but some of her most memorable noshes include:

-- Sweet potatoes from the Automat and roast pork with mayo on soft white bread from a gentile deli. "Delicious."

-- Fruit. When she first got famous, "I was just excited to be able to buy as many slices of honeydew melon as I wanted and eat only the ripe top parts. To me, that was the height of luxury."

-- Quenelles. Composer Marvin Hamlisch "was one of the few people who even knew what they were and could recommend a restaurant that served them."

-- Rice pudding. Without raisins!

-- Coffee ice cream. Without chocolate chips!

-- Pastrami, though with a side dish of wisdom: "No matter who you are," she writes, "you can only eat one pastrami sandwich at a time."

She loved her dog Sammie so much, she cloned her

After Streisand's beloved Coton de Tulear Sammie died, she adopted another puppy, Fanny, then heard that the cloning lab she commissioned had unexpectedly produced not one but two dogs, Violet and Scarlet, who "look so much alike that I had to put lavender and red silk flowers on their collars to identify them ... It's fascinating to see certain traits that remind me of Sammie, yet each of these beloved creatures is a unique being. You can clone the look of a dog but you can't clone the soul."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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