Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942)
is an American singer, theatre and film actress, composer,
and film producer and director. She is also an Academy
Award winner for Best Actress.
Early years
She was born Barbara Joan Streisand in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, New York then moved to another area in Brooklyn.
Her father died when she was only 15 months old, and
she had a lifelong turbulent relationship with her
stepfather. Her well-intentioned mother did not encourage
her daughter to pursue a show business career, opining
that Barbara was not attractive enough. This criticism,
many speculate, led to a lifelong insecurity about
her appearance, despite enormous success in every
facet of show business.
She was educated at Beis Yakov School
and then famed Erasmus Hall High School, where she
graduated fourth in her class in 1959, and overlapped
by a year future collaborator Neil Diamond. She never
attended college.Early singing, theater, and television
career
Following a music competition, she
became a nightclub 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
in 1960 — she became a big success as a singer.
It was also at this time that she shortened her first
name to Barbra to make it more distinctive.
She signed her first recording contract
with Columbia Records in 1962 and her first album,
The Barbra Streisand Album, won two Grammy Awards
in 1963. Her recording success continued, and at one
time, Streisand's first three albums appeared simultaneously
on Billboard's pop albums Top Ten - an amazing feat
considering it was at a time when rock and roll and
The Beatles dominated the charts.
Starting in 1962 Streisand also appeared
on Broadway, first in a small but star-making role
in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962)
when she was still a teenager, and then as lead role
Fanny Brice in Jule Styne's and Bob Merrill's Funny
Girl (1964). After some notable television guest appearances,
Streisand built on her success with a number of television
specials for CBS. The first special, My Name Is Barbra
(1965), is considered by many to be the best, and
has been praised by critics and fans.
Singing career
Barbra Streisand has recorded more than 60 albums,
almost all with the Columbia Records label. Her early
works in the 1960s (her debut, The Second Barbra Streisand
Album, The Third Album, My Name Is Barbra, etc.) are
considered classic renditions of theatre and nightclub
standards, including her famously ironic version of
"Happy Days Are Here Again". Beginning with
My Name Is Barbra her albums were often medley-filled
keepsakes of her television specials.
Starting in 1969, Streisand tackled
contemporary songwriters; she foundered on attempts
to tackle rock, but finally found success with the
pop and ballad-oriented, Richard Perry-produced Stoney
End in 1971, whose Laura Nyro-written title track
was a big hit.
During the 1970s she was also highly
prominent in the pop charts, with number-one records
like "The Way We Were", "Evergreen",
"No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" and "Woman
In Love"; some of these came from soundtrack
records to her films.
When the 1970s ended, Streisand was
named the most successful female singer in the U.S.,
with only Elvis Presley and The Beatles having sold
more albums. In 1982, music critic Stephen Holden
wrote that Streisand was "The most influential
mainstream American pop singer since Frank Sinatra."
Streisand returned to her musical
theater roots with 1985's The Broadway Album. This
was an unexpected commercial success, holding the
coveted #1 BillBoard position for 3 weeks straight,
and being certified 3x Platinum. The album featured
some songs reworked by Stephen Sondheim especially
for this recording, was critically acclaimed, nominated
as ALBUM OF THE YEAR and landed Streisand her 8th
Grammy as Best Female Vocalist.
In 1991 she released a four-disc 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, and rarities, from her early recordings
up to 1991. At the same time, Ms Streisand presented
her 2nd film as a director, THE PRINCE OF TIDES. The
movie was a box office hit, bringing in close to 100Million
at the Box Office and was Nominated for 7 Academy
Awards.
Around 1992, however, music success
was not in Streisand's favor. She was again, proclaimed
the most influential entertainer by the New York Times,
for her relationship with President William Clinton.
Streisand's concert fundraising events helped propel
Clinton into the spotlight and into office. Streisand
later introduced Clinton at his Inauguration in 1992.
However, Streisand's music career was on hold. A Concert
Tour was suggested to her and she debated it for nearly
2 yrs, due to her immense stage fright. A year later,
Streisand made an unusal comeback, landing a #1 Album,
BACK TO BROADWAY, which was certified Platinum prior
to release. In September 1993, Streisand made news
again, announcing her first public concert tour in
27years. Tickets to the limited tour were sold out
in under 1 hr. Streisand also hit the cover of every
major magazine, in anticipation of what TIME MAGAZINE
named, "The Music Event of the Century."
The tour was one of the biggest all-media merchandise
parlays in history. Ticket prices ranged from $50
to $1,500 - making Streisand the highest paid concert
performer in history. Barbra Streisand: The Concert,
went on to be the top grossing concert of the year,
earned 2 Emmy Awards, the prestigious Peabody Award,
and the taped broadcast on HBO is to-date, the highest
rated concert special in HBO's 30year history.
On New Year's 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 programme, called Timeless, which was also
released on a two-disc album by Columbia. At the end
of the last millennium, she still was the number-one
female singer in the United States, with at least
2 # 1albums in each decade since she had started out.
Her most recent albums have been Christmas
Memories (2001), a collection of somber holiday songs,
and The Movie Album (2003), featuring famous movie
themes and backed by a large symphony orchestra. Guilty
Pleasures (called Guilty Too in the UK), a collaboration
with Barry Gibb and a sequel album to their previous
Guilty, was released worldwide in 2005.
Film career
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 there
was a tie in this Oscar category. Her next two movies
were also based on musicals, Jerry Herman's Hello,
Dolly! (1969) and Alan Jay Lerner's and Burton Lane's
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), while her
fourth film was based on the Broadway play The Owl
and the Pussycat (1970).
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. Her second
Academy Award was as composer of the song "Evergreen",
from A Star Is Born (1976) and was the first time
a woman had received this award (the film itself,
though, was widely criticized as a vanity project).
Along with Paul Newman and Sidney
Poitier, Barbra Streisand formed First Artists Production
Company in 1970 so these actors could secure properties
and develop movie projects for themselves. Streisand's
initial outing with First Artists, while not a huge
commercial success, was the personal Up the Sandbox
(1972).
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 later published
the original photos of her bare breasts, Streisand
sued them.
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 both it and Prince of Tides. There
was controversy when Yentl received five Academy Award
nominations but none for the major categories of Best
Picture, Actress, or Director. There was more controversy
when Prince of Tides received even more nominations,
including Best Picture, but Streisand still was snubbed
for Best Director.Some claimed that her well-known
uncompromising, tough behavior was to blame for the
slight, 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.
In 2004, Streisand reappeared on the
big screen in the comedy Meet the Fockers,playing
opposite Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, and Robert DeNiro
among others. The film was very successful commercially
and Streisand garnered positive reviews.
Filmography
1968 Funny Girl Fanny Brice
1969 Hello, Dolly! Dolly Levi
1970 Barbra: Yesterday, Today, and Forever Short subject
1970 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever Daisy Gamble
1970 The Owl and the Pussycat Doris
1972 What's Up, Doc? Judy Maxwell
1972 Up the Sandbox Margaret Reynolds
1973 The Way We Were Katie
1974 For Pete's Sake Henrietta 'Henry' Robbins (aka
July Pork Bellies)
1975 Funny Lady Fanny Brice
1976 A Star Is Born Esther Hoffman Also executive
producer
1979 The Main Event Hillary Kramer Also producer
1981 All Night Long Cheryl Gibbons
1983 Yentl Yentl (aka Anshel) Also producer, director,
and writer
1986 Directed by William Wyler Documentary
1987 Nuts Claudia Draper Also producer
1990 Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones Documentary
1991 The Prince of Tides Dr. Susan Lowenstein Also
producer and director
1996 The Mirror Has Two Faces Rose Morgan Also producer
and director
2004 Meet the Fockers Roz Focker
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
More Articles..
