Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand Bio

Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director whose career has spanned more than six decades. Streisand achieved commercial and critical success in recordings, film, and theater, earning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony honors. She has sold more than 150 million records worldwide and is the second-highest certified female artist in the United States.

Streisand was the first woman to score 11 number-one albums on the Billboard 200 and remains the only artist to top that chart in six decades. Her early nightclub and Broadway work led to a Columbia Records contract and a breakthrough with The Barbra Streisand Album in 1963. She is the only artist to have won competitive Academy Awards as both an actress and a songwriter.

Early Life and Background

Barbra Joan Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York City, the daughter of Diana Ida (née Rosen) and Emanuel Streisand. Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, while her father was a high school teacher. Streisand’s family is Jewish; her paternal grandparents emigrated from Galicia, and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand’s first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications of an epileptic seizure, and the family fell into near poverty. Streisand later recalled always feeling like an outcast, saying that every other child’s father came home from work and hers did not. Her mother worked as a low-paid bookkeeper and, in 1950, remarried Louis Kind, with whom she had a daughter, singer Roslyn Kind, Streisand’s younger half-sister.

Streisand grew up hearing her mother sing semi-professionally, and at 13 she and her mother recorded songs on tape during a visit to the Catskills, the moment she later called her first inspiration as an artist. She attended the Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva of Brooklyn, Public School 89, and then Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where she became an honor student and sang in the chorus alongside classmate Neil Diamond. She graduated in January 1959 at age 16 and set out trying to get roles on the New York stage.

Path to Music

Living on her own at 16, Streisand took various menial jobs and slept on an army cot at friends’ homes before returning to her mother’s Brooklyn apartment for meals. She landed her first stage experience in 1957 at the Playhouse in Malden Bridge, New York, and spent nights backstage at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. In 1960, while working as an usher at The Sound of Music, she auditioned for a singing role, and although the director did not cast her, he encouraged her to feature her singing on her résumé.

Her boyfriend, Barry Dennen, taped her singing and helped her enter a talent contest at the Lion, a gay nightclub in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, where she won and was invited back to perform. She soon became a regular at the Bon Soir, opening for comedian Phyllis Diller, and later moved to the more upscale Blue Angel. During this period she changed the spelling of her name from Barbara to Barbra to make it unique without abandoning it entirely.

Streisand gained wider recognition on television, appearing on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Garry Moore Show, where she first performed her now-signature slow, sad version of Happy Days Are Here Again. In 1962 she auditioned for the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale, was cast alongside Elliott Gould, and received a Tony Award nomination and the New York Drama Critics’ Prize for Best Supporting Actress. The cast album led to her contract with Columbia Records, signed when she was 21, which gave her full creative control of her material in exchange for lower pay.

Barbra Streisand Career

Early Career (1960–1967)

Streisand made her professional debut at the Bon Soir in September 1960 and released her Columbia debut, The Barbra Streisand Album, in early 1963, reaching the top 10 on the Billboard chart and winning three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The Second Barbra Streisand Album followed later that year, and she ended 1963 with one-night concerts in Indianapolis, San Jose, Chicago, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

She returned to Broadway in 1964 as entertainer Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, introducing the songs People and Don’t Rain on My Parade, appearing on the cover of Time, and winning a Tony Award nomination. In 1966 she repeated her success in London’s West End at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Between 1965 and 1968 she starred in four solo television specials, including the Emmy Award-winning My Name is Barbra.

Breakthrough (1968–1983)

Streisand’s first film was Funny Girl in 1968, directed by William Wyler, an artistic and commercial success that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress in a rare tie with Katharine Hepburn. She followed it with musical comedies and dramas, including Hello, Dolly! (1969), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), and The Way We Were (1973) opposite Robert Redford, for which she received another Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.

For the 1976 film A Star Is Born, in which she also starred, Streisand won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Evergreen, becoming the first woman to be honored as a composer. In 1983 she produced, directed, co-wrote, and starred in Yentl for Orion Pictures, becoming the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. Yentl received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Score, which it won.

Notable Works and Milestones

Streisand’s signature recordings include The Barbra Streisand Album (1963), People (1964), The Way We Were (1974), Guilty (1980), The Broadway Album (1985), and Higher Ground (1997). She topped the Billboard Hot 100 with The Way We Were, Evergreen, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough), and Woman in Love, and was the first woman to land 11 number-one albums on the Billboard 200, a record she extended with Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway in 2016.

Barbra Streisand Award Nominations

Barbra Streisand has earned nominations across film, music, television, and theater, including Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for The Way We Were and additional nominations for Best Picture and Best Screenplay for The Prince of Tides. She has received Grammy Award nominations spanning Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Female Vocalist, along with multiple Tony Award nominations, including a 1964 nod for Best Leading Actress in a Musical and a Special Tony Award recognizing Star of the Decade in 1970.

Barbra Streisand Awards Won

Streisand has won two Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Funny Girl and Best Original Song for Evergreen, the first woman to receive the latter. She has won 10 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, the Grammy Legend Award, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, along with five Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honors.

Barbra Streisand Family

Streisand’s parents were Emanuel Streisand, a high school teacher who died in 1943, and Diana Ida Streisand (née Rosen), a former soprano who became a school secretary. Her younger half-sister, singer Roslyn Kind, was born from her mother’s remarriage to Louis Kind in 1950. Streisand has an older brother, Sheldon, and a second cousin, Adam Streisand.

Personal Life

Streisand married actor Elliott Gould on September 13, 1963; they separated in 1969 and divorced on July 6, 1971, and they have a son, Jason Gould, who has appeared with her on screen. She later had long-term relationships with hairdresser and producer Jon Peters from 1973 to 1982 and with composer Richard Baskin from 1983 to 1987. On July 1, 1998, she married actor James Brolin, with whom she has no children; Brolin has sons from his first marriage, including actor Josh Brolin, and a daughter from his second marriage. Streisand divides her time between her residence in Malibu, California, and her work as a singer, actress, filmmaker, songwriter, producer, and director.