Current:Home > StocksBarbra Streisand details how her battle with stage fright dates back to experience in "Funny Girl" -BrightFuture Investments
Barbra Streisand details how her battle with stage fright dates back to experience in "Funny Girl"
View
Date:2025-04-18 05:56:39
Despite her celebrated career, Barbra Streisand said that her performances have been shadowed by a fear of forgetting her lines — a fear that took root during her early days in Broadway's "Funny Girl."
She said the off-script, on-stage behavior of her "Funny Girl" co-star Sydney Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's son, drove her into therapy and instilled a deep-seated anxiety about live performances.
"He kept talking to me on stage under his breath. Not looking at me in the eyes. You know, looking, like, at my forehead or my hair or something. And talking. Like a crazy person," she told "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King.
"And it was driving me insane," she said. "That threw me so off that I thought, 'What, what am I, what is my next line?'"
"I never lost that, that fear of performing, fear of forgetting my lines," Streisand said.
The Oscar-winning actress and singer details her anxiety in her new memoir "My Name Is Barbra," which is being released on Tuesday. Her struggle with stage fright was so intense that after forgetting lyrics during a 1967 concert in Central Park, Streisand avoided public performances for nearly three decades.
Her new book also details her childhood. With the loss of her father when she was just 15 months old and facing discouragement from her mother, she credits her pursuit of acting as a way to find a sense of belonging and love.
"Even though my mother said, 'You'll never make it as an actress. You know, you're not pretty enough,' or whatever, I thought, because I used to read movie magazines, right, and kind of dream, 'Is it, wouldn't it be wonderful?'" she said.
Her dreams and dedication have indeed paid off. Streisand's Malibu home has been personally curated, from her legendary garden to what she calls "the mall," featuring unique shops and an antique clothes room.
"I'm so finicky, and when I love something, I don't care how much it costs," she said.
Streisand recently celebrated her 25-year marriage to actor James Brolin, who said he asked Streisand to marry him three times before she agreed.
And Brolin shared a personal detail about their early relationship: "I had been literally — it's a wild word, but I had been celibate for three years saying, 'Who needs this?'" After two previous marriages, he said he wanted to avoid "getting involved in a lousy situation."
During an anniversary celebration, Brolin read her a letter, saying, "You know someone is right for you if you love to be with them all the time. And when I go, when I finally go, I will love you then."
"Home is not a place. Home is a person," he added.
As for who could play Streisand in a potential future film, she suggested she doesn't want to think about it yet.
"I don't know of anyone who can," she said.
- In:
- Barbra Streisand
veryGood! (2)
Related
- Trump invites nearly all federal workers to quit now, get paid through September
- Charities say Taliban intimidation diverts aid to Taliban members and causes
- Are masks for the birds? We field reader queries about this new stage of the pandemic
- Overdose deaths involving street xylazine surged years earlier than reported
- Pregnant Kylie Kelce Shares Hilarious Question Her Daughter Asked Jason Kelce Amid Rising Fame
- Huntington's spreads like 'fire in the brain.' Scientists say they've found the spark
- Céline Dion Cancels World Tour Amid Health Battle
- Canada's record wildfire season continues to hammer U.S. air quality
- Rams vs. 49ers highlights: LA wins rainy defensive struggle in key divisional game
- Rust armorer facing an additional evidence tampering count in fatal on-set shooting
Ranking
- Gen. Mark Milley's security detail and security clearance revoked, Pentagon says
- Intermittent fasting is as effective as counting calories, new study finds
- New U.S., Canada, Mexico Climate Alliance May Gain in Unity What It Lacks in Ambition
- OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in 2021 he'd broken some rules in design of Titan sub that imploded
- IRS recovers $4.7 billion in back taxes and braces for cuts with Trump and GOP in power
- American Climate Video: Giant Chunks of Ice Washed Across His Family’s Cattle Ranch
- It's time to have the 'Fat Talk' with our kids — and ourselves
- U.S., European heat waves 'virtually impossible' without climate change, new study finds
Recommendation
Tree trimmer dead after getting caught in wood chipper at Florida town hall
See Kelly Clarkson’s Daughter River Rose Steal the Show in New “Favorite Kind of High” Video
In Corporate March to Clean Energy, Utilities Not Required
Wind Takes Center Stage in Vermont Governor’s Race
Why we love Bear Pond Books, a ski town bookstore with a French bulldog 'Staff Pup'
After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)
Inside the Love Lives of the Stars of Succession
Oil Pipelines or Climate Action? Trudeau Walks a Political Tightrope in Canada