# My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Meet the person behind the personality.

“You’re never going to make it, you know. Never!” Barbra Streisand was only 19 years old when the director of I Can Get It for You Wholesale hurled these words at her. It was March 22, 1962, moments before the opening night of the young performer’s Broadway debut.

Many would have been shaken to their core by such a comment – especially from someone as experienced and acclaimed as Arthur Laurents. But not only did Streisand receive a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the Laurents-directed musical, she also went on to prove him wrong many, many, many times over.

Barbra Streisand has been a mainstay of our sound waves, stages, screens, and streets for over six decades – a feat few can claim to have pulled off. Reverend Jesse Jackson considered her “touched by God”; Diana, Princess of Wales asked her whether she knew how “wonderful” she was; and composer Richard Baskin described her as a “singular, nonrecurring event in the universe.”

From the outside, it is easy to assume Streisand’s success was simply, as they say in Yiddish, bashert, or meant to be. And yet, as we’ll soon explore, there’s more to Streisand’s story than first meets the eye. Her journey from fatherless child with an emotionally unavailable mother to enduring cultural icon wasn’t always smooth sailing. In fact, it might not have been possible at all if not for Streisand’s deep need to love and be loved, her unwavering commitment to truth and authenticity, and the sheer power of her ambition and belief.

But it seems it’s this very dance of the unbelievable and inevitable that makes Streisand’s life as intriguing and inspiring as it is – and in this Blink, we’ll explore this theme as it appeared in her career as a singer, actress, filmmaker, and activist.

Ready to meet the person behind the personality – in her own words, for the very first time? Let’s dive in!

The singer

It’s hard to believe it all these years – and albums – later, but Streisand never set out to have a music career. Instead, she wanted to be an actress, and still vividly recalls standing on the seat at her first cinema outing as a child so she could see the screen better.

Yet, as the 18-year-old walked to her vocal audition at the Bon Soir, the Greenwich Village nightclub that ultimately put her on the map, she remembers thinking, “This night could change my life.” Streisand’s premonition would prove to be accurate. She was hired for the initial two-week contract – and performed to great acclaim.

It didn’t take long before Streisand became the talk of the town, and soon after turning 20, she signed an unprecedented deal with Columbia Records. Marty Erlichman, Streisand’s career-long manager, knew his client well and negotiated a contract in which Streisand would get a smaller fee upfront in exchange for something the young singer regarded as infinitely more valuable: full creative control. Not that Streisand would need to be concerned with finances. Today, she’s the first and only singer to have albums chart at number one over six consecutive decades.

Despite singing not being her original dream, Streisand came to find a deep appreciation for it. Unlike acting, where she quickly became bored once the cast had moved from rehearsal to performance and her playing had to remain consistent, Streisand was free to improvise with abandon in her “own show,” as she came to view her sets at nightclubs and sessions in the studio.

Sixty years and ten Grammy Awards later, it’s startling to consider that one of our most prolific performers has only had half a singing lesson, can’t read music, and doesn’t warm up or practice. Streisand admits she doesn’t fully understand her gift either, and her attempts to put her experience into words don’t offer us much in the way of concrete advice. She sees notes of dazzling lengths as a “matter of will” and compelling composition as simply a matter of surrendering to, in her words, the “certain inevitability of the notes.”

As such, one can’t help but wonder: Is brute-force or bashert behind Streisand’s almost unparalleled success as a recording artist? With Streisand, it doesn’t seem to be either/or. Tenacity and talent are always inextricably in concert.

The actress

At first, audiences didn’t quite know what to make of the young Streisand, alternately calling her a “Babylonian queen” and “basset hound,” a “Pharaonic profile” and “sour persimmon.”

Comments on her face were to follow Streisand throughout her entire career, and here, too, it’s hard to separate what helped from what hindered her success. Either way, she certainly made a splash in the theater scene for her Broadway debut as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale before taking on the role that propelled her career into the stratosphere: Fanny Brice in the film and musical versions of Funny Girl.

And yet, despite the fact that becoming an actress with her name in lights had been her sole dream since she was a child, when the reality of fame hit Streisand, she found it oddly disconcerting. Suddenly, audiences clapped the moment she walked on stage – before she’d even done anything. As she questioned at the time, how much was applause worth if she got it for nothing? On the one hand, it felt nice to receive the adoration she’d lacked at home, but on the other, she could sense this wasn’t really the love she was looking for.

In any case, the [so-called] “love” she received from her Broadway Funny Girl co-star, Sydney Chaplin, was certainly not what she was after. When the 22-year-old made it clear she wasn’t interested in the 38-year-old’s advances, he made her life a living hell – intentionally throwing her off in performances and treating her with disdain off-stage. If you ever wondered why Streisand didn’t return to Broadway after Funny Girl, it was because of the trauma that working with Chaplin caused her.

You may also have wondered about that eight-year void in screen appearances after 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces. She loved the more “private” medium of film, but Streisand was waiting for something truly sublime to cross her desk; in the process, she said no to several projects that, in hindsight, she regrets – turning down Klute, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Cabaret. It was only after a conversation with French filmmaker François Truffaut that she stopped holding out for perfection and said yes to box-office hits such as Meet the Fockers and The Guilt Trip.

People often say Streisand was “born” to play Fanny Brice, and perhaps that really was bashert. Yet it’s of equal note that she had to audition seven times for the role, once again suggesting that her luminous stage and screen career was just as much “fight” as it was “fate.”

The filmmaker

It’s striking that Barbra Streisand – unquestionably best known for singing and acting – calls directing and editing her “most creative time.”

That said, Streisand also admits she initially became a director as a matter of [what she calls] “self-defense.” She wasn’t offered the roles she wanted, and rarely found herself directed to the same standard of excellence she aspired to attain in every aspect of her creative life.

It was William Wyler, Streisand’s beloved director on the film version of Funny Girl, who put the idea in her head back in 1967 when she was just 25. After all, she had, in a sense, been deftly directing herself as a singer and theater actress since she started performing publicly at 18.

Yentl was to be Streisand’s directorial debut – but it would take 15 years of pure persistence to get the project across the line. In hindsight, it’s astounding how much resistance she received. Yes, she would be the first female to produce, write, direct, and act in a film, but by this time she’d also enjoyed over two decades of unprecedented success in the entertainment industry. Warner Bros. and Columbia passed on her pitch, despite both studios having grossed more than `$600 million in today’s money on films she’d starred in. As she points out, “I was a bankable star, but nobody would take any money out of the bank for me.” But that would only be the beginning of the obstacles she’d encounter. 

Despite winning the Golden Globe for Best Director – making her the first woman to do so – and Yentl winning Best Picture, Streisand wasn’t even nominated for the Academy or Directors Guild of America awards.

Though she loved the creative control directing afforded her, Streisand wasn’t sure she’d return to the director’s chair after the prejudice she faced the first time around. It was only because she so adored Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides that she couldn’t help but say yes to directing the film version of the book.

As with Yentl, Streisand threw herself into the project with utter abandon, interrogating every line, scrutinizing every prop, and pushing every performance to uncover every ounce of truth. But if she expected her acclaimed second time at bat to be received any better by the Academy, she was let down. Although nominated for her work as director at the Golden Globes and DGA Awards, she was notably snubbed again at the Oscars.

While it’s hard to imagine anyone else directing Yentl or The Prince of Tides – surely that was always bashert – Streisand and her fellow female directors had to fight formidable opposition from the industry at the time. As she confesses, she felt “a little pang” when she presented Kathryn Bigelow with the Academy Award for Best Director in 2010 – making Bigelow the first female in history to win the award. That was one first that would never be Streisand’s.

The activist

“You have simply changed the mood of a nation,” said Israel’s prime minister, Shimon Peres, to Streisand after she sang at his ninetieth birthday and gave two concerts in the country. “You promoted the heart of our people … a new spirit, a new mood, a new hope,” he emphasized. 

Most of us appreciate what a landmark figure Streisand has been in the worlds of music, theater, and film – at least to some extent. Few of us, however, realize what a prominent political player she’s been, too. But, in fact, through her eponymous foundation, Streisand has supported several causes, ranging from civil rights to nuclear disarmament, since 1986. She then doubled down on this commitment in 2021, setting up the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA to tackle our most pressing social issues.

In recognition of the father who died when she was an infant, Streisand funded the Emanuel Streisand Building for Jewish Studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, where men and women, Arabs and Jews, Christians and Muslims come together in joint pursuit of truth and knowledge. Some years later, Streisand helped establish a cancer research fund at the University of Arkansas in the name of her dearly beloved “Southern mom,” Virginia Clinton, who died of breast cancer. 

Streisand also pushed hard to shine a light on women’s heart disease at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai – and to no small effect. Before she set out to raise awareness and money, one in three women in the United States was dying from the disease – it killed more females than all cancers combined. Today, that figure is down to one in four.

As we’ve seen, Streisand has opinions and is no more afraid to voice them in the political sphere than in the recording studio or on a soundstage. For instance, she[, in her words,] “didn’t hesitate” to tell President Clinton how dismayed she was when he settled for the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning homosexuals in the US military, and she made no secret that her song “Don’t Lie to Me” was about Donald Trump’s time in office.

Streisand’s paternal grandfather, Isaac, used to say of his son, “Manny was so smart. He could talk to presidents.” While Emanuel Streisand never personally had the privilege while he was alive, he, in a sense, received the honor several times through his daughter. And no doubt he will continue to do so as Streisand presses on to campaign for environmental conservation, gender equality, and voter education.

Final summary

Streisand’s almost unparalleled success as a singer, actress, filmmaker, and activist for over six decades seems equal parts unbelievable and inevitable – unbelievable, considering her upbringing and the not-infrequent challenges she faced along the way; inevitable, due to Streisand’s relentless pursuit of love, truth, and her ambitions. 

And perhaps that’s what makes the entertainment icon’s story so intriguing and inspiring – it’s just as much a tale of willpower as it is an instance of bashert. It’s probably no coincidence that one of Streisand’s favorite quotes is Goethe’s poignant observation, “At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you.”