Playboy Interview: Barbra Streisand

She is one of our few living legends: among the top female box-office attractions in the U. S. and one of the highestpaid and most sought-after singers in the world. At 27, Barbra Streisand became the only person to have won every major entertainment award: the Tony for stage, the Grammy for records, the Emmy for television and the Oscar for film. Her obsessive and independent behavior has also made her a continual target for detractors.

Since her talent burst forth in "Funny Girl" she has been attacked for her manners, her looks, her voice, the men she has dated, the man she currently lives' with, the scenes she's been accused of stealing. She has been criticized for being a perfectionist in an art form that necessitates compromise, for not playing more challenging roles as an actress, for having a Brooklyn accent . . . for being a success. From her first Broadway appearance to her latest film, Streisand has developed a reputation as a fighter, arguing with directors, producers and writers over broad concepts and minute details. Her battles have been duly reported in the press, almost as if the writers were scoring sporting events.

Barbara Joan Streisand was born on Pulaski Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on April 24, 1942. Her father, a high school English and psychology teacher with a Ph.D. in education. died when she was 15 months old; she didn't get along well with her mother. She was a delicate, determined girl who suffered from having a nose too large for her face and a body so thin it bordered on the sickly.

Thinking her own background dull, Streisand invented one that sounded more exotic: She dropped an A from her first name and wrote in the bio notes for her first Broadway Playbill that she was born in Madagascar and reared in Rangoon. Brooklyn, to her, was "boredom, baseball and bad breath," and the farther she could get from it, the greater her psychological possibilities of escape.

When the opportunity to work as an usher at the Loew's Kings movie theater came up, she grabbed the job. If she could have slept in the theater at night, she probably would have. With the money she earned, she talked her mother into sending her to the Malden Bridge Playhouse near Albany for two summer sessions, though her mother felt she was too thin, too unattractive, too peculiar to ever become a movie star.

After moving to Manhattan, Barbra spent her money for acting classes. When she had free time, she went up for stage auditions but was always turned away for lack of experience. Then a friend told her about an amateur-night singing contest at The Lion in Greenwich Village. The winner would receive $50 and a week's contract. Streisand had never sung before an audience, but she figured she had nothing to lose. Heavily made up and wearing a feather jacket, she stood before the microphone and opened her mouth to sing "A Sleepin' Bee." Need we say who won? Shortly afterward, she met a young theatrical manager, Marty Erlichman, who was to become her manager--a relationship that has lasted, without a contract, for 16 years.

Her first TV appearance was on "The Jack Paar Show" in April 1961. Mike Wallace's "PM East" followed shortly after, and she became the resident kook: brash, offbeat, unafraid to take on more famous guests in verbal jousts that she usually won. Eventually, she landed a small part in a Broadway play, "I Can Get It for You Wholesale," in which she played a homely secretary, Yetta Marmelstein. The star of the show was a 23-year-old actor named Elliott Gould. They fell in love; she stole the show from him, but he still moved into her $62-a-month apartment above a seafood restaurant. Two years later, they were married.

By the time her first album was released, Streisand had appeared on the "Dinah Shore Chevy Show" and was earning $5000 a week at New York's Basin Street East. The National Association of Gagwriters gave her the Fanny Brice Award as the best comedienne of 1962. President Kennedy invited her to sing at the White House. Her second album outsold the first and she became the hottest singer in the country.

The time had come for Barbra to make waves on Broadway, and the vehicle she chose was the story of Fanny Brice, the vaudevillian actress/singer/comedienne, whose son-in-law, Ray Stark, owned rights to her life story. Stark was a Hollywood producer and former agent for Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton. When the curtain came up and Barbra Streisand declared in her opening number of "Funny Girl" that she was "the greatest star," critics and audience--perhaps for the first and last time--seemed to agree.

Named the Best Female Vocalist of 1963 and Cue's Entertainer of the Year, Barbra appeared on the covers of Life, Look, Time, Show, Cosmopolitan. The scrawny kid from Brooklyn now modeled fashions in the pages of Vogue. There was a Streisand look, a Streisand manner, a Streisand sound.

But with fame came anxiety. Her marriage to Elliott Gould was one of constant turmoil; her star kept rising and his had yet to be launched. In 1966, she gave birth to a son, Jason Emanuel. That same year, she appeared in concert before 135,000 in Central Park. When she went to Hollywood to begin her movie career, her husband remained behind. Rumors that she and Gould had separated soon proved correct. By the time they were divorced, Barbra Streisand had achieved her goal: She was a movie star.

In 1968, she and Katharine Hepburn shared an equal number of Academy votes and they became the first actresses to split the Oscar for Best Actress (Hepburn's role was in "The Lion in Winter"). With "Funny Girl" behind her, Barbra's future seemed limitless. She followed it with "Hello, Dolly!," which was then the most expensive musical ever filmed, and then with a third stage play brought to film, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever."

Wanting to establish more control over her productions, Streisand, along with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, formed a production company, which they called First Artists, in 1969. Steve McQueen joined them a year later and Dustin Hoffman signed on after that. The actors agreed they would take no salary and would make their pictures within a certain budget, but they would receive a share of whatever profits resulted from their work.

Before doing "Up the Sandbox" for her new company, Streisand starred opposite George Segal in "The Owl and the Pussycat" and opposite Ryan O'Neal in "What's Up, Doc?" She also became politically involved, campaigning for George McGovern for President, John Lindsay for mayor of New York and her friend Bella Abzug for Congresswoman. She made international headlines in 1970 when she dated Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Her most anticipated picture since "Funny Girl" was "The Way We Were" which paired her with another top box-office attraction, Robert Redford. In the film, Streisand lives out the fantasy of thousands of women whose features aren't perfect, as she captures the all-American blond-haired, blue-eyed gentile by the sheer force of her personality and wit.

Streisand's own new love, however, was neither blond nor clean-shaven. He was Jon Peters, a volatile hairdresser with a reputation as a street fighter, whom she met while shooting "For Pete's Sake." Streisand had summoned Peters to fix a wig and kept him waiting for over an hour. When she appeared, he told her he didn't do wigs and he didn't like being kept waiting. He also told her she had a great ass. The dynamic between these two headstrong and ambitious people was the subject of jokes and speculation in the press and in Hollywood. Streisand spoke publicly about their love and so did Peters, who divorced actress Lesley Ann Warren and moved in with his new lady. Together they bought a ranch in a secluded area in Malibu and remodeled the grounds, Peters designing, Streisand decorating.

After "Funny Lady," a picture Streisand didn't want to make, Peters became so involved in her professional life that he gave up his own business to devote full time to producing projects for her. Wanting to update her recording image, he encouraged her to sing rhythm-and-blues, reggae and rock in an album he produced called "Butterfly." Then, after flirting with the possibilities of either acting in or directing her next movie, the fourth remake of "A Star Is Born," both he and Streisand decided he should produce it, with Streisand as executive producer.

The picture, a First Artists production, took three years to complete and drained everyone involved. Kris Kristofferson fell its filming was an experience worse than boot camp. Director Frank Pierson, in a controversial article he wrote for New York and New West before the film was finished, detailed the behind-the-scenes behavior of the star and her boyfriend, calling the experience a "nightmare."

When the film finally opened, in December 1976, it received some of the most scathing reviews imaginable. But Streisand's fans didn't let her down. The movie grossed almost $30,000,000 world-wide and the album sold 5,000,000 copies--millions more than any previous album from a movie score. She received thousands of supportive tellers and, though her acting was panned by her peers, she did win an Oscar for composing her first song, "Evergreen," the theme song from "A Star Is Born."

With Streisand virtually the only actress in America whose appearance in a movie guarantees its success, we thought it was time to explore the woman behind the rumors, myths and apocryphal stories. Lawrence Grobel, who was kept very busy this spring interviewing both Henry Winkler (published in the August Playboy) and La Streisand, found it was his most challenging assignment ever:

"When we began our conversations in November 1976, 'A Star is Born' had yet to be released. Streisand told me she was full of fire and wanted to exorcise the feeling she had concerning the way the press had treated her, anticipating a strong backlash against her and the film because of Pierson's article. To her, that was the lowest blow.

"Having tried to get to her for nearly seven months prior to that, I wasn't expecting the phone call from her secretary saying that Barbra wanted to meet me. I was told to go to the Todd-A-O studios, where she was putting the finishing touches on the film.

"The moment I met her, she came out talking. 'Why is the press so hostile to me?' she wanted to know. I began to elaborate--after all, having waited so long to see her, I had plenty of frustrations to vent myself.

"During our first meeting, before our taped sessions, I watched her edit and dub the last seven minutes of her movie. With her screen image in front of us 20 feet high, Barbra fiddled incessantly with an electronic control board, bringing the drums up, the guitars down, her voice out. She would stop the film and have it run backward. She would hear things no one else could--finding fault with a certain beat, a missed stress. And although the engineers wanted to wrap up and go on vacation, she remained and worked until exhaustion overtook everyone.

"That, I was to discover, is how she works. And how the interview was going to work. I was not just coming to talk for a few hours or even a few days. No, this was going to absorb the next six months of my life: We would meet, talk, argue, laugh; she would call me to add something, to ask me what she had said about someone, to curse me out for being an interrogator, not a friend. I would go to her large home in Holmby Hills and we'd sit in the living room, or in the kitchen eating asparagus soup, or outside by the pool. On weekends, I would go to her and Jon's Malibu ranch and we'd walk in the garden, talk in the little house where she had edited the film or in the main house, sitting at a long table or sprawled on a quilt-covered mattress by the fireplace. We'd continue talking in my car, as I drove her down Pacific Coast Highway to an appointment with her doctor; or in her Jaguar, when she would go to pick up Jason from school. We once even talked in the back of a realtor's car on our way to Gregory Peck's home in Brentwood, which was for sale." (In Peck's study, she looked at his stereo equipment and at the albums on a shelf. One section was devoted to her albums, which touched her. But when she saw that the tag with her name on it spelled Barbra with three A's, she borrowed a pen and corrected it.)

"The interview sessions became, at times, a battle. When I touched on subjects that weren't comfortable for her, she would answer evasively or glibly and I would tell her what I thought of her answers--and get on her nerves. Because she'd always demanded a great deal of control of interviews in the past--including the TV chat with Barbara Walters, for which Streisand had unprecedented first-rush approval--and wasn't getting that sort of control in this case, things often got emotional.

"At one point, when things were apparently too rough for her, Jon called and asked if I'd disappear for a while. I understood and did. Barbra completed her album and called me. We spent another week together, with my arriving about noon and staying to talk for six or eight hours. By the end of the week, we had finished and I was exhausted. I gave her a present, which made her laugh: a pair of boxing gloves.

"I still hadn't heard the last of Barbra. For the next few weeks, she would call regularly to add another thought she'd had. I would fumble for my tape recorder, attach it to the telephone and we'd be off again. 'You know,' she said, as exhausted by then as I was, 'this is like making a film or writing a novel.' I didn't have to be told that. It's the way Barbra is: Anything she's involved in gets her full allotment of energy.

"But she clearly regarded this interview as something special. It was going to be her definitive statement, she said, in which she would talk about subjects that had been rumored but neither confirmed nor denied. Because we talked for so long, some of her lengthier comments--such as those on critics who have constantly attacked her--had to be sacrificed; but what remains constitutes, I believe, the most extensive study of Barbra Streisand--in her own words--in which she's been willing to participate.

"During a break in one of the sessions, Barbra looked at me and asked, 'Why am I so famous? What am I doing right? What are the others doing wrong?' Those are among the questions I hope this interview will answer."

Playboy: You've never before sat for this extensive an interview. Why did you decide to do it?

Streisand: Because I'm tired of turning the other cheek. I'm tired of reading that I'm in pornographic movies or that cageless birds are flying around my house; I'm tired of being a target for absurd lawsuits. I'm tired of malicious articles slandering me. In the past, I never did anything about it, and that can be very frustrating and very painful. I have always laid back and I'm tired of it!

Playboy: Isn't that the price of being what is known as a superstar?

Streisand: I suppose you're right, and the cliché of the price of fame is correct: You can't have everything. By the way, you have to know that I don't like the word superstar. It has ridiculous implications. These words--star, stupor star, superstar, stupid star--they're misleading. It's a myth, and the myths are a waste of time. They prevent progress. It's like an American tradition: A person gets successful and then he's supposed to change for the worse. It's silly.

Playboy: Since you seem bent on setting the record straight, let's discuss the strong criticism you've received about your reputation for being difficult and the obsession you seem to have for taking control of whatever projects you are involved with.

Streisand: OK, but first let's clarify the word control, because it has negative implications. Let's just say when I use the word control, I mean artistic responsibility. If you mean that I am completely dedicated and care deeply about carrying out a total vision of a project--yes, that's true. I'm interested in all aspects of my work, down to the copy on the radio commercials. It all fascinates me.

Acting and singing are only facets of what I do. Following through, checking out details can be just as important. Once, after I'd OK'd the photograph for an album cover, I noticed something about it looked funny--only to find out it was my nose. It had been retouched; the bump was removed. Somebody at the lab probably thought, This will please her. I told the lab people that if I'd wanted my nose fixed, I would have gone to a doctor.

Another time. I was listening to a record of mine before it was released. I heard something strange: these dead spaces between phrases. I asked what had happened. I was told with a proud smile, "We cleaned it up. took out the breathing." I said, "Don't clean so good! You're cleaning up what is natural, what is right." Well, the breathing was restored, but I was called difficult. It's been that way ever since. For years, I never thought that this was due to the fact that I was a woman; but now I think that if a man did the same thing I did, he would be called thorough--while a woman is called a ball breaker.

Playboy: But after your last experience, making A Star Is Born--and everything that was written about you and Jon Peters--do you still feel as strongly about wanting such control in future films?

Streisand: Not if I am just hired as an actress. But the nature of the deal First Artists worked out is that the actor is held artistically responsible for his film and for that privilege. he does not get paid any salary. Anything over a certain budget comes out of his own pocket. If the movie is a failure. the artist loses, since he hasn't been paid any front money. If it's successful, he stands to gain. Even though Up the Sandbox--my company's first film--was an artistically rewarding learning experience, financially it lost. I have been in nine or ten films and never had any control over any of them, including Up the Sandbox, where I gave away the control. After that, I said, "On my next film, I will be responsible. I'll lay my taste on the line."

Warren Beatty and Robert Redford, among others, are responsible for their movies and they don't get attacked for it. What is so offensive about a woman doing the same thing? There is a great burden attached to taking responsibility--it is not an easy position to be in. There is enormous pressure. You become very vulnerable and you can't blame anything on anyone else. A Star Is Born was difficult; it was physically and emotionally exhausting; it took three years of my life; but it was worth it. The reward was the work: making it, editing, dubbing scoring. It was something I had to prove.

But, my God, the stories! It's like we were made out to be two idiots, the actress and her hairdresser, this journalistic oversimplification of what we were doing: two kids spending $6,000,000. Even though by today's standards, with major films costing up to $25,000,000, ours was a low-budget film--particularly for a musical. Was I flipping my artistic lid hiring my boyfriend to produce it? I hired him because he's an excellent businessman who has great creative instincts. I'm no fool. We brought the picture in on time and under budget, and it turned out to be the most successful movie I have ever done.

So, to answer your question: Yes, I do want control. I want to be responsible for everything I do in my life, whether it's good or bad. I have visions in my head--I hear music: I dream. It's very rewarding to have them materialize.

Playboy: How do you answer the criticism that your ego is so large that it puts you into areas of production that are way beyond those of an actress or a singer?

Streisand: What is conceit and what is ego? And why are they being put down? If I write a song, is that conceit? If I have ideas about sets and the orchestrations and production, is that ego? Why do I have to be ashamed of what I do? What if the range of my talent extends into those areas? It's true that I am a perfectionist. It's true that I have a very healthy ego; anybody who creates does. To have ego means to believe in your own strength. To not have the fear that anyone can take something away from you. And to also be open to other people's views, because they can't take your view away. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. I'm very secure in one way and very insecure in another. I'm consumed with self-doubt, which, I believe, is also necessary. I value other people's opinions, which I mainly use to clarify my own. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do--bad or good.

Playboy: We'll ask the question in a blunter way: Why do you think you have a reputation as a bitch?

Streisand: It's a very male-chauvinist word, bitch. I resent it deeply. It's an unkind, mean word. It implies uncalled-for anger. A person who's bitchy would seem to be mean for no reason. I am not a mean person. I don't like meanness in anyone around me. Maybe I'm rude without being aware of it--that's possible.

Playboy: So why do you suppose you have that reputation? Why are so many people saying those kinds of things about you?

Streisand: I think it makes good copy. Bad news sells more magazines and newspapers, and the public sees what the editor wants it to see. The New York Times did three separate stories on me that were all favorable. They were never printed. I was told they were too nice--not spicy enough--puff pieces. Bad press also acts as an equalizer: "She's got fame and fortune, God forbid she should be a nice person, too."

Rumors, rumors. Did you hear that Jon and I were supposed to have broken up? It's like the press can't stand the fact that not only was our film a success but, perhaps, so is our relationship. If I had gotten pregnant as many times as has been reported from "a very trustworthy source," I could have singlehandedly populated half of New York City.

Take that porno film I'm supposed to be in. When I first heard the rumor, I thought it was a put-on. But these people you never can seem to find were selling a film and claiming it was me. I couldn't resist the temptation to see what the actress looked like--and also to check out her performance--so we got a copy. The film, naturally, is very blurred. The girl has long hair, like I did back in the Sixties, although she was chubby, while I was very skinny. But the dead giveaway came when the camera zoomed in on her hands around the guy's you-know-what. There they were: short, stubby fingers! Definitely not mine. So all you would-be buyers, don't waste your money. Actually, the idea of me in a pornographic film is preposterous! Me--right?--who was an usher in a legitimate theater and hid my head so nobody would remember, after I became famous, that I had showed them to their seats!

I don't know why people say these things about me. Maybe it's because I'm a perfectionist, which must drive some people up the wall. On one hand, I'm deeply insecure, so I think, obviously, it's something I've done to make them feel that way; on the other hand, after hearing about some of the horrible things said about myself, I, too, say, Why? Why do they say those things about me?

Playboy: Do you really want to know or is that a rhetorical question?

Streisand: No, I want to know why. When I was nine years old, sometimes the girls would gang up on me in my neighborhood, make a circle around me, make fun of me, and I'd start to cry and then run away. I'm still trying to find out why. It has nothing to do with being a star. What did I do? What did I vibrate? What made them angry at me?

Playboy: The most recent example is what supposedly went on during the filming of A Star Is Born. According to an article in New York and New West by your director, Frank Pierson, you were impossible to work with for a variety of unflattering reasons.

Streisand: Yes, it was a field day for critics to take that article of Pierson's and review the movie from it. Thank God the truth has a strange way of filtering through the trash, 'cause people went to see it. Pierson crucified an unfinished film. Before the article came out, I said to him. "Don't hurt this film, Frank. We've all worked too hard on it. Let it live on its own, let it be born. Give it a fair chance. Don't put a black cloud over it."

When I first heard about it--someone sent me a 43-page article he was trying to sell to magazines--I confronted him with it, and he denied it, saying he only intended it for his friends to read, that it wasn't the article he was going to publish. When I confronted him on all the inverted truths in it, he had no reply. No other article has ever touched off this deep sense of injustice in me. I felt totally helpless and impotent knowing so many people would probably believe what they were reading.

Playboy: What were his motives in publishing the piece?

Streisand: It's hard to say. I don't like speculating on what he had inside his head. I can't imagine how anyone could be so destructive to a film as well as to himself.

Playboy: How did you feel when you saw it in print?

Streisand: I felt like the painting called The Scream by Edvard Munch, a scream with no sound. And perhaps like the Africans who felt their soul was being taken away when their picture was taken.

All the years that I have been getting this bad press, I have never answered back. I just thought it was really useless. But this was the last straw. He broke the confidentiality of the relationship between a director and an actor, which is a very intimate, private relationship that has a great deal of honor attached to it. I was deeply hurt. He tried to make me look ridiculous and unprofessional. A lot of things are said and done in the heat of passion of the creative experience, and it's all part of the process. It happens on many films.

Playboy: If such things happen on many films, why did Pierson single this one out as being such a nightmare?

Streisand: It was a nightmare. The experience of making this film was a nightmare for all of us. One time I was a little sharp with him and I apologized. I said, "I have a problem with tact, I only know how to be direct. I'm sorry. I don't know how to shmeikle you, I don't know how to go around the bush, I just tell you what I feel." He said, "That's OK, I agree with you and then behind your back I do what I want anyway." So we had two different styles, you see. When things got worse, I had to assume more responsibility.

But, look, maybe he's right. Maybe he's this terrific director. Maybe it was the combination of our chemistries that didn't click. In my opinion, he didn't know how to deal with actors. When I asked him one day what he thought of the difference in playing a scene in one of two ways, he said, "I'm neutral." I said, "Frank, if you ever want to be a director, you can never be neutral--lie, make it up, explore your feelings, anything--because the actor has to have some feedback, some mirror, some opinion, even if it's wrong." What I was trying to tell him was that he's got to communicate with the actors, use all their talents, improvise. He didn't try to talk to the actors, give them a sense of their characters, a sense of their own importance in this film. Every extra is important! Every detail!

He put down my sense of detail when I made suggestions about the sets or the costumes. He seemed to look on it like, Oh, God, how meddlesome. But he had accepted his position from the start as a collaborator and even seemed to welcome my contributions, since he had never directed a musical before. He knew I was more than just a hired actress, he knew that this was an extremely personal film for me, that my responsibility as executive producer extended into all those other areas. But once we started shooting, he seemed to forget our agreement.

Playboy: Would you say that hiring Pierson, or not firing him, was one of the major mistakes you've made?

Streisand: Well, that's a very dramatic statement. I have been accused of being ruthless. And, in fact, it's my problem that I'm not ruthless enough. I should have fired him.

Playboy: One of the things Pierson wrote was that you admitted that if the film failed commercially, it would be all over for you and Jon. Did you feel that way?

Streisand: I find it degrading talking about this. I don't want to defend myself because I said something like that, but not that at all. When you put yourself on the line and you invest so much of your life into a project, if it had been a failure, it would have been a devastating thing for me. I had never been so involved in a film before and that's what I was talking about. If the film failed, or Jon did a terrible job of producing, or it went millions over budget, it would have been very difficult for Jon.

But what I resent in this is that when you make a film with somebody, it's like the relationship with a priest or a lawyer or a doctor. In my experience making films or making records or being involved in any way professionally with anyone, my trust was never violated by them nor theirs by me. So for this man to have even discussed these things is completely indiscreet and unprofessional; and I'm not going to defend any private conversations that he distorted and used for his own self-serving purposes.

Playboy: Did you read the reviews of A Star Is Born?

Streisand: I haven't read reviews of my movies since What's Up, Doc?, but I was looking forward to reading the Star Is Born reviews, because I felt I'd lost some of my objectivity toward the end. I was hoping to learn from the criticism. But then, when I heard the reviews were very personal attacks on Jon and me, instead of focusing on the work, I was devastated. The worst reviews I've gotten were from the New York critics. I heard that when one of them watched A Star Is Born, he talked back to the screen. I mean, the New York critics hated the film!

I wish I could be like Shaw, who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said, "I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me." I wish I could be above it all like he was. But now, with some distance, I've begun to care less and less what the critics think.

Playboy: But at the time, the reviews surprised you?

Streisand: I was in shock. I'd just been hearing good things, like at the previews and from professional people I respected. It was like: Who's crazy? Can people call the movie brilliant and can the same movie be called a piece of trash? Well, the audience is the only one who knows, the only one who can't be bought.

Playboy: We'll return to your experiences with A Star Is Born, but what about the more general criticism? Why, for instance, do critics seem to write about you so emotionally?

Streisand: I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. I don't have time to worry about those things. Maybe it's because I'm not easily accessible. Maybe it's because they're prejudiced against ex-hairdressers. But with all the important things going on in the world, who really cares? In the final analysis, what I can't understand is, why don't we nurture our artists? Protect them? Support them? Encourage them? Why is it necessary to be so vicious?

Playboy: You've been involved in group therapy for a while. Has it helped you to find out why people think of you as they do?

Streisand: Obviously, I wasn't too selfaware in the past. This is a whole new kind of world opening up to me, which is acknowledging other people's realities. When people feel that I don't seem to respect them, they get very angry. People care a lot about what I think of them. I notice that. I complain a lot, which is something I'm looking at. And I have a negative approach to things, I see the black side rather than the white. I'm in the process of great change. Instead of being frightened by the world, I'm starting to look at it differently. Instead of feeling only fear when people approach me for my autograph, I'm beginning to feel the love, their vibrations of love, which bring out my own vibrations of love instead of just feeling threatened and frightened. What I've found is that I have the power in my life to turn off people who hurt me; it's a defense mechanism that, I realize, covers up a lot of pain in my past.

Playboy: What kind of pain?

Streisand: I'm still the same person whose father died when I was 15 months old. For many years, I felt like the victim. Why did it happen to me? I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be like all the other little girls who had their daddies come home. Mine never came home. That's why that scene in A Star Is Born, about the anger at somebody's death, was so meaningful to me. It was a very personal thing I wanted to express.

As I grew up, I was always missing something. I was resentful. I'm sure it started me off on that kind of track. Whenever I would have an abscess in my tooth, I would go, Why me? I took it all so personally. Who was punishing me? It started off very early and I'm still trying to change it.

Playboy: Do you see yourself now as a victim?

Streisand: In some ways. Even my success makes me a victim. It makes me feel guilty. And when people envy me, I think. Oh, God, don't envy me. I have my own pains. Money doesn't wipe that out.

Playboy: Do you think that you're a neurotic woman?

Streisand: If neurotic means having certain emotions based on the past, yes. Most people don't know what neurotic means, so it's like a dirty word. But in the true, literal meaning of neurotic, I think I am.

Playboy: What are some of the childhood memories that get to you?

Streisand: When I was five years old, my mother sent me to a health camp, because I was anemic. I remember their taking off my clothes and dumping me into this bath like I was a piece of dirt. They scrubbed me and washed me and put this lice disinfectant in my hair, then they put me into their uniform. I befriended a girl named Marie, who was 14. I always hung out with older kids. I remember jumping into a pool of water where I thought I was going to drown and she pulled me out. So I'm afraid of water today.

Until about three years ago, I sometimes had asthma attacks when I went to the country and breathed the fresh air. My association went back to when I was five years old at health camp. I was homesick. Every day I would cry and the kids would make fun of me. I would say, "I'm not crying, I have a loose tear duct that just runs." My possession, my identity, my sense of self was only around my maroon sweater with wooden buttons that Toby Berakow, the lady who took care of me during the day while my mother went to work, knitted for me. The next year, my mother sent me to a Hebrew camp for my health. The food was so awful I used to throw it down to the other end of the table, but they had this great yellow cake on Friday nights, which I'm still looking for. I remember that. When my mother came to visit me with my future stepfather, Louis Kind, I said, "You're not leaving without me. I am not staying here any longer." I was always able to manipulate my mother. I made her pack my bags and she took me home. With Louis Kind in the car. He hated me ever since. I mean, until he died. He was allergic to kids, as my mother said--even though I must have been pretty obnoxious.

Playboy: Were they married then?

Streisand: I don't think so. After they married, we moved to this new apartment and I slept in the bed with my mother the first night. When I woke up in the morning, I had clicks in my ears. I told my mother and she said, "Well, sleep on a hot-water bottle." She never asked me about it again. From that day, I led a whole secret life. Something was wrong with me--I had these clicks in my ears. Two years later, I developed a high-pitched noise that I have heard all my life. Not a ringing that goes away in a minute or two but all the time. I never hear the silence. When I used to have my ears examined, it turned out I had supersonic hearing. I hear high-range, high-pitch noises off the machine.

Playboy: Can you hear everything in the normal range?

Streisand: Yes. But I also hear this noise. There were periods in my life when I was very unhappy and it would drive me nuts. When I was a kid, I used to go around with scarves to try to cut out the noise, which only made it worse, because it drives it more inside your head. I had this secret, I never told anybody. I didn't want to be different. I felt totally abnormal.

Playboy: How do you connect that with your musical talent?

Streisand: Strange connection. It made me listen very carefully to life. I would listen like nobody listened. But it's not good, it's not fun. I'm like inside my body, I hear my body. I'm very aware of my body's functions. It's very frightening. I see many colors.

Playboy: In your head?

Streisand: In my eyes. When I look at a wall, I don't just see a white wall. I see other things.

Playboy: Textures or colors?

Streisand: Textures and colors. It's like an overemphasizing on the processes of being alive.

Playboy: Is it like being stoned?

Streisand: I don't know. That's what people talk about. Maybe I'm stoned all the time.

Playboy: What else do you remember from your secret life as a kid?

Streisand: I remember a whole life when I was five and six in Williamsburg--Brooklyn, not Virginia. My friend Rosalyn Arenstein was an atheist--I was always trying to convince her there was a God--and my other friend, Joanne Micelli, was an Italian. I was the Jew. Joanne went to Saint Joseph's and I went to the Yeshiva of Brooklyn. Joanne used to say, "The Jews killed Christ." And I'd say, "No they didn't." Meanwhile, I had this fascination about wanting to be Catholic--the nuns, the fathers, the costumes, the whole thing. I'd always go, "Hello, Father," and curtsy. I thought it was great. Also, to have a father, that there was a guy named Father, who sort of loved his people. I loved the beauty of the Church. The Yeshiva was very dinky compared with the Church.

I remember being a child lying on my bed and having very opposing images of myself. On one hand, I remember feeling as if I were chosen. I can't be specific, but I could feel people's minds, like I knew the truth, I could see the truth. On the other hand, I thought I had cancer. When I was nine years old. I came across a cancer booklet that had nine symptoms of cancer and I had every one of them. There were two or three years of my life based on dying. I thought that I'd have about six months to live and I didn't want to go to a hospital and be sick, I'd rather just die in my bed and that's it. I had it all figured out. One week I got an enormous pressure on my chest, as if somebody was sitting on it. I told my mother about it. She was so cautious--"Don't go out in the rain, don't do this, you'll get a cold, don't do that." But if anything ever happened to me, she'd say, "I told you so. Now you take care of it." I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to go to the doctor, because I thought he'd say I had cancer of the chest. It took me a week to gather up the courage to go to the doctor. I remember going up the stairs and ringing his bell and he didn't have office hours that day. The pressure disappeared. That was my first psychosomatic illness.

Playboy: Do you feel bitter about that period of your life?

Streisand: No. I love my mother, but I used to resent her for never encouraging my acting ambitions. She wanted me to be a school clerk--all those paid vacations. But, in a sense, she's probably responsible for my success. Because I was always trying to prove to her that I was worth while, that I wasn't just a skinny little marink.

Playboy: What else went on inside your head as a kid?

Streisand: I was a strange kid, very shy. I would take my brother's drawing pencil and put it on my eyes. Also, my mother had purple lipstick and I found this white stuff and mixed the colors so I had violet lips, blue eyes, and then I bleached the top of my hair blonde, but I didn't like the color, so I put a rinse on. My hair, being porous, turned blue and green. I wore frilly clothes, because I wanted to be very feminine, but I hung around with the smart kids, who wore glasses and oxfords and no make-up. I was this absolute misfit. I was in all honor classes, yet I looked like the kids who sat on the corner, chewed gum and were always in the principal's office. There were the smart kids and the dumb kids, so can you imagine how peculiar I was?

Playboy: Did you have any interest in boys when you were in school?

Streisand: You know who I had a crush on when I was in school? Bobby Fischer. He was a year younger than me, but I would have lunch with him every day and he would sit there, laughing hysterically, reading Mad magazine. Right? And he wore these earlaps on his ears. He was always alone and very peculiar. But I found him very sexy. I was 16 and he was 15. He was a chess champion then.

Playboy: What did you talk about? Did you understand chess?

Streisand: We talked about Mad magazine.

Playboy: Did he seem to be the genius he is?

Streisand: Oh, yeah. I thought so. He was an absolute nut. An eccentric at 15.

Playboy: And so, it seems, were you.

Streisand: Well, I didn't consider myself eccentric. I was a poor kid. The wealthy girls moved to Long Island. They had pretty clothes and mothers and fathers and they wore their hair nice, they were well-brought-up Jewish girls. They used to call me Colorful, because I had all this color on me. I was pathetically skinny, in these long dresses. I looked funny.

Playboy: Were you envious of the girls who moved to Long Island?

Streisand: Oh, my God, yeah. I used to read the obituaries and the marriage columns in the Times. All these faces and who they married, where they were going to live and their mothers and fathers. And I always read the apartment ads. Brooklyn apartments in fancy places. New York was the big thing. All I wanted to do was move to Manhattan. "Ma, look, it's $105, why can't we afford it?"

Playboy: How did you feel a few years later, when you could afford any apartment in Manhattan, and your application for a $240,000 apartment was rejected?

Streisand: It was a $200,000 apartment and it was the second time. I got very angry at that city for turning me down. I was turned down because I was an actress or because I was Jewish, or both. I took it very personally, to tell you the truth. And I decided to move out. I don't want to live in a city where I can't get a place to live.

Playboy: How strongly do you identify with being Jewish?

Streisand: I am deeply Jewish, but in a place where I don't even know where it is.

Playboy: Are you bringing up your son. Jason, in any kind of Jewish tradition?

Streisand: I haven't given him religious training yet. I want him to know about his heritage, but it's for him to make up his mind what he believes.

Playboy: What about the ritual of the bar mitzvah?

Streisand: I don't believe in ritual, in that ritual. Because the kids never know what they're talking about. Ma nishtano halaylo hazeh mikol haleylos? That's the only Hebrew I remember--it's from the Passover ceremony. I studied Hebrew, I went to Hebrew classes and could read fluent Hebrew; but I didn't understand what I was saying and I thought to myself. What is this all about? Today maybe they're teaching them what they're saying.

Playboy: Did you grow up wanting to do anything besides act?

Streisand: I would have loved to be a doctor. Or a biologist. A landscape architect. I would love to plan a perennial English garden. As a matter of fact, I did already. It's fascinating: the mathematics, the science involved in a perennial garden. At all times of the year, something is blooming while other things are dormant as the soil regenerates. Do you know how fascinating flowers are?

Playboy: Do you talk to them?

Streisand: No. But it's an incredible world, flowers and plants and their Latin names.

Playboy: You know the Latin names?

Streisand: Some. When I get obsessive about something, I get absolutely nuts. I would wake up in the middle of the night and write down Pittosporum undulatum as a species that I forgot to plant.

Playboy: Can you spell it?

Streisand: You want me to spell it?

Playboy: Yeah, spell it.

Streisand: You really want me to spell Pittosporum undulatum? P-I-T-T-O-S-P-O-R-U-M, I think, U-N-D-U-L-A-T-U-M, I think. I was a spelling-bee champion in school. I love learning. There were so many things to become. I didn't necessarily have to be an actress. What am I saying--I desperately wanted to become an actress!

Playboy: Why?

Streisand: Because I didn't like the reality of my life. I felt like I knew certain truths. I wanted to be able to express my feelings and have people see themselves and feel that they could identify with me. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Playboy: When did you discover you could act?

Streisand: When I was about 11 and my mother slapped me for doing something wrong and I pretended I was deaf for four hours and she believed me.

Playboy: When did others start to believe you?

Streisand: When I was 15 and I did a scene from The Rose Tattoo. I played this young girl; it was a scene of sexual exploration. All I did was pick a technical task, which was just physically touching the actor I played the scene with. At one point, he stood up and I stood on his feet; one time I jumped on his back; one time I pretended I was blind and while I was talking, I was touching his face. It was this awkward sexuality. I didn't know what I would do next. I was as interested as the people watching. It was the kind of moment I'm always striving to feel again. It was a case of the conscious self watching the subconscious self. I think it's what they call inspiration--which I've experienced very few times.

In those days, it was all so simple: to find the essence of a scene, the key emotion, the writing beyond the intellect. Further down. It's like meditation, getting down to that center, to the simplest form of being. That was the summer that I learned most about my craft, about acting, about singing, about performing.

You see, until I was 16, the only books I read were Nancy Drew mysteries. I never even heard classical music. Then I became consumed with acting and used to go to the New York Public Library and look up all the plays by Dumas fils and other writers that Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse played. I read Russian plays, Russian novels, Greek tragedies. Anna Karenina changed my life. I had never been exposed to literature, to painting. I remember hearing Respighi's Pines of Rome that summer; The Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky. Can you imagine what that's like? To hear that music for the first time? That's a very important part of who I am and where I come from. Most people think that I grew up being influenced by parents who were artistic, but it isn't true. It was a very vivid experience, that first hearing of classical music when I was 16.

On the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I would write letters to Lee Strasberg that I would never send. He was the master, like a Zen master, at the time.

Playboy: What did you write to him about?

Streisand: My observations in this acting class. I wrote that I heard this actor talk today and the teacher said to the actor, "What kind of parts do you want to play?" And the student said, "Parts like myself." I wrote: Can you imagine this actor wanting to reduce the level of art to himself? Which is my feeling today, too. I had the right idea then. I was very lucid when I was 16.

Playboy: What else did you observe in your acting class?

Streisand: I would see people who I knew would never make it, who had no charisma at all. They would go up on stage and they were very self-conscious; they would twitch, get nervous, be awkward, and all their energy was being channeled out in these spurts and spasms of their bodies, the flickering of their eyes. They couldn't be. To be is the hardest thing for an actor. To be. To do nothing. When these people were concentrating on doing nothing, they became fascinating; I felt myself absolutely riveted. When the person was doing nothing, a little sigh, a breath, a tiny movement of one's pinkie became interesting. It was a lesson that I learned: that to be alive, to be human is fascinating: you don't have to do much to be fascinating. To me, it was the secret of it all: The secret was the something in nothing and the something of nothing.

Playboy: Were you auditioning for Broadway plays at that time?

Streisand: I used to go up for parts. I would read magazines like Show Business in which they announced casting calls. I used to look like a real beatnik. I wore black stockings and had this trench coat and they wanted walk-ons for a beatnik. Now, you don't have to be Sarah Bernhardt to do a walk-on as a beatnik! I remember going to this audition and they said. "Well, we have to see your work." I said. "Why do you have to see my work? It's a walk-on; I don't even have to say anything. How are you going to see my work, if you don't give me a chance to do the work?" It was so nuts . . . people in these powerful positions. That's when I got so angry and said, "Screw you, 'cause I ain't comin' back and asking you for no work." I don't know how I'd ever really have gotten a job if I didn't sing, because I entered a talent contest and won it. I hated singing--I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I would have made it any other way.

Playboy: That's a surprise--you hated singing?

Streisand: When I started to sing, I thought it was nothing. I wanted to be playing Shakespeare, Chekhov; what was I doing in a night club? I was making a living, I was making enough to eat. The first place, The Lion, which was a gay bar, gave me great London broil and $50 a week. Then they took me down the street to the Bon Soir, which was the big-time place, where I made $108 a week. When I auditioned, I forgot that I had gum in my mouth, so I took it out and stuck it on the microphone and it got a big howl. Then I started to sing. They liked it, but they thought I was going to be a comedienne. When I went off the stage, Larry Storch, who was the headliner there, said to me, "Kid, you're gonna be a star." Like in the movies! And Tiger Haynes's girlfriend, whose name was Bea, came over to me and said, "Kid, you got dollar signs written all over you." I'll never forget it. I was wearing my antique vest, my antique Twenties shoes with butterflies on them, and I just looked at her.

Playboy: So while most people thought you were trying to make it as a singer, you were really concentrating on your acting?

Streisand: Yes. Sometimes when I hear that first record of mine, where I'm geshreying and getting so emotional, I think; Oh, my God, how did they ever like me? I'm embarrassed by it.

Playboy: You're embarrassed by the first Barbra Streisand album? With Happy Days Are Here Again and Cry Me a River?

Streisand: The ending was totally wrong. It was the end of the world, Happy Days. It went Oooooo, aaaaaay, my voice cracked, it was nuts!

Playboy: You don't think back fondly on any part of that album?

Streisand: Not particularly. Although that was my repertoire, those are the songs I did the most work on conceptually. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, Soon It's Gonna Rain and my favorite song, A Sleepin' Bee, but I never changed the arrangement, so I never sang it again. In a sense, that was the purest me. I was yearning for just so much that you hear it in my voice. It's very young, very high, very thin, like a bird. I think my voice has actually gotten better, warmer, mellower. But I probably lost some of my high notes. I don't think I can sing as high. I don't even know what key I sing in.

Playboy: Here you are, making light of your singing; yet you showed us a letter a priest wrote to you, saying he felt the presence of God when he heard you sing. Aren't you ever a little impressed with your own voice?

Streisand: No, not often. Sometimes I listen to myself and say, "Oh, God, is that me?" It sounds awful. Like a nasal voice.

Other times I'll hear it and I'll think. Jesus, is that my voice? Sounds pretty damn good to me. A pretty sound, like an instrument. Sometimes I'll just love it, sometimes I'll hate it. If I'm just singing in the car or I'm singing with the kids. I have a terrible voice. You would never think that I was a famous singer. I sing that way only when I am concentrating. I don't even think it's that special.

Playboy: You may not think it's special, but how many singers can you think of who can do more with their voices than you can?

Streisand: Oh, God, lots of them. I'm really inspired by talent, it doesn't threaten me. I wish I could sing like Aretha Franklin. Those fantastic high notes she hits. Joni Mitchell is extraordinary, a beautiful writer and poet, great voice, beautiful voice. What does more mean, anyway? Sing higher and lower? I love Lee Wiley, who I guess most people haven't heard of. And Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday.

What's so weird is that I haven't felt part of the music business these past few years, until A Star Is Born. Because all these people write their own songs and sell these millions of albums, I just felt so inadequate singing other people's songs. Not being able to write. That's an industry where everyone is so fucking talented and everyone is so rich who makes it that there's just no jealousy. When I think of the industry, I think of Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon. Stevie Wonder, who writes all his songs, orchestrates them and sings like he does-he's a fucking genius!

The talent is just amazing; and, therefore, nobody has to hope that someone else's record fails, like they do in the movie business. "Oh, you're doing another film about that; very good." But thinking: I didn't get the options, I hope it fails. It's a whole other, different feeling in the music business. Everyone in it is functioning at the height of creativity and talent.

Playboy: You say you felt inadequate because you couldn't write, but you recently shared an Oscar with Paul Williams for composing Evergreen.

Streisand: Yeah, that was a real thrill--I still can't get over it.

Playboy: What inspired you to attempt to compose a song?

Streisand: What happened really was that my guitar teacher wrote some songs that she played for me. It made me feel terrible that I couldn't do it. Then I went into the bathroom and started to cry. Jon came in. It was this really lovely moment: he was comforting me and saying. "You can do it. You can do anything you set your mind to. Try to write a song." That's what inspired me to try to stretch myself to write a song.

Playboy: Did you know it was good when you wrote it?

Streisand: I wasn't sure how good Evergreen was-although Jon always loved it. I'm so doubtful and critical of my own work. I'll listen to it and think the melody is a little simplistic at the beginning, then it gets a little arty in the middle with the of chord changes that I like. I chose those beginning chords because they were easy to play on the guitar. Then when I started hearing the rest of the song in my head, I had to find out how to play it on the guitar. But the opening thing was because they were easy chords to play, my fingers just slid up the strings. So then I'll go, Eehh, it sounds so good, I wonder if they'll know how simple it was to do. When people respond to it, that makes me feel wonderful.

Playboy: Which is easier for you, singing or acting?

Streisand: Singing is easier. A song is only three minutes long. If you have a good voice, a good instrument, you're halfway home. Three quarters of the way home. Acting is indefinable. It's different. It's also less impressive, unless you have a crying scene or a very dramatic moment. When you sing a song, the sheer musicality of the experience can move people; they don't even have to hear the lyric.

Playboy: Do you listen to your own albums?

Streisand: Never, ever, ever. And don't play one around me.

Playboy: Really? Why?

Streisand: I can't stand to hear them.

Playboy: Why?

Streisand: Because I put so much into them when I'm making them: the choice of songs, working on the arrangements, the cover, the copy, the editing. It's like cooking a meal: You don't want to eat it afterward.

Playboy: Even years later?

Streisand: Years later, sometimes it's interesting. But when it's too soon, I only hear the mistakes, the flaws; I only hear the parts that could have been better.

Playboy: Do you sing at home?

Streisand: Never.

Playboy: What about when friends are over and they say, "Come on, Barbra, sing People . . ."?

Streisand: I'm totally embarrassed and shy about singing in front of people. To sing in a room where my friends are--I'll tell you what happens: I feel them listening so hard, I feel my power, and it frightens me. Somehow, in a big place, when the lights are on you and it's total blackness out there, you're singing alone, it seems like it's the place to do it, to do the thing I do. But I no more could sing a song in a room with my friends than jump off a bridge.

Playboy: Is it difficult singing for Presidents, as you did for Kennedy and Johnson?

Streisand: I sang for Kennedy because I loved him. I remember meeting him--it was so incredible: he actually glowed! But when I sang at Johnson's Inauguration, it was the most depressing evening I ever had. Kennedy was dead and this man was there because he was dead and it was just awful.

Playboy: Do you ever worry about something happening to your voice?

Streisand: No. When singers get around me, they ask me about my voice and what I do for it. I say, "Do nothing, pay no attention to your voice, then it shall be yours." They have humidifiers going and I don't know what they do. I feel it's very destructive when people pay too much attention to their voices. They coddle themselves. They take care of themselves too well. I never think about my voice. I never work out, I never exercise my voice. I just use it when I want to.

Playboy: What is it, do you think, that makes your voice so special?

Streisand: My deviated septum. If I ever had my nose fixed, it would ruin my career.

Playboy: Did you ever consider having it fixed?

Streisand: In my earlier periods, when I would have liked to look like Catherine Deneuve, I considered having my nose fixed. But I didn't trust anyone enough to fix it. If I could do it myself with a mirror, I would straighten my nose and take off that little piece of cartilage from the tip. . . . See, I wouldn't do it conventionally. When I was young, everyone would say, "You gonna have your nose done?" It was like a fad, all the Jewish girls having their noses done every week at Erasmus Hall High School, taking perfectly good noses and whittling them down to nothing. The first thing someone would have done would be to cut my bump off. But I love my bump, I wouldn't cut my bump off. All I would want to do is change the tilt of the front and take off a little bit, just a little bit, that's all. I think Silvana Mangano, the Italian actress, has the most beautiful nose there is. An incredible nose. Roman, bumpy, like from an old piece of sculpture. That's what I consider beautiful. I certainly don't like pug noses or little tiny noses.

Playboy: A lot of plastic surgeons must have resented your rise to fame.

Streisand: Yeah, made business bad. You know, Fanny Brice had her nose done when she was an older woman. I found a picture of her. It said: "Fanny Brice, just having had her nose fixed so that she could play more leading parts."

Playboy: Do you find that sad?

Streisand: Yeah.

Playboy: Do you feel you played Fanny differently in Funny Girl than you did in Funny Lady?

Streisand: In Funny Lady, I was trying to act the character of Fanny Brice--a certain tough veneer that was hiding her vulnerability. Also, I sang Jewish songs like she did, which I didn't do in Funny Girl. More attention was paid to the externals, like calling people Kid, because Fanny had a hard time remembering people's names. In Funny Girl, I was the character. It was scary. I read certain conversations that have never been published and it was very peculiar, we were very much alike in a very deep area, in spirit. I knew that I would do her justice by being true to myself. It didn't interest me to have copied her walk, I was interested in the essence of her. Her essence and my essence were very similar. That is a little spooky, you know?

Playboy: How did Ray Stark come to that same realization when he decided to take a chance with you, a relative unknown, in a major Broadway play?

Streisand: They were gonna hire Anne Bancroft or Carol Burnett. I was too young for the part. And then a friend of Stark's wife saw me in I Can Get It for You Wholesale and she told them about me, that I reminded her of Fanny Brice.

Playboy: The part of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale wasn't a very large role, but you managed to stop the show when you sang. What did it mean to you to stop the show?

Streisand: I had very mixed feelings: On the one hand, I loved it; on the other hand, I hated it, because I didn't want Elliott to be hurt.

Playboy: Hurt in what way?

Streisand: By my success.

Playboy: But it was during that show that you met and eventually married its leading man, a marriage that lasted six years. What was your initial impression of Elliott Gould?

Streisand: He did crazy things, I liked him; he wasn't normal. He saw me audition for I Can Get It for You Wholesale and I had just gotten my own phone. So when I auditioned. I said, "If anybody would like to call me, here's my number." When I got home, the phone rang and a voice said, "This is Elliott Gould. You were brilliant," and he hung up. I didn't know who he was.

Playboy: What kind of relationship was it at first?

Streisand: He was my first real boyfriend, when I was 19.

Playboy: What did you think of him as an actor?

Streisand: Very creative. I used to have big fights with Elliott, because he imitated Alan Arkin; he really didn't have a sense of himself. And he was the funniest person. He'd go into elevators and do these funny things, and I'd say, "That's who you are. You are you." That was way before he did any films, when we were in theater.

Playboy: Was it a very difficult time then, when your career was rising and his hadn't yet taken off?

Streisand: Haven't you seen A Star Is Born? [Laughing] It's an age-old theme. Yes, it was difficult. I think our getting a divorce freed him. Freed his creativity, too. It also made him much more ambitious, which I felt was a good thing for him.

Playboy: Do you think he wanted to prove something to you?

Streisand: I don't know; I suppose so. But it was fabulous; there he was, on the cover of Time magazine. He became the antihero. I was very proud of him. I wanted it very much for him and for my son.

Playboy: After the Broadway production of Funny Girl, you also wanted the movie part so badly that you signed a fourpicture deal with Ray Stark, which you regretted afterward. Why the love-hate feelings about the play and its producer?

Streisand: When I started to rehearse the play Funny Girl, for several months it was great fun. I would eat these huge Chinese meals right before I would go on stage. The more they changed the scenes, the more I liked it. The more I had different songs to try out, the more I loved it. We had 41 different last scenes, the last one being frozen only on opening night. Forty-one versions of a last scene! That was always exciting, stimulating. But once they froze the show, I felt like I was locked up in prison. I couldn't stand it anymore. I could hardly even get through the performances. That's what drove me into analysis: Funny Girl on the stage. No one knows the truth about it. I was on Donnatal [a prescription drug].

Playboy: Why Donnatal?

Streisand: To control my stomach. I was so frightened. I was on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week, or something like that. I thought. What do people expect of me? They hadn't seen me, but they'd heard of me. I felt the pressure. Enormous pressure. I had a big calendar; I would cross off the days. After 18 months, all I wanted was out, out, out.

But when I signed the deal in 1964 to do the movie, I only wanted to do Funny Girl and Ray refused to give it to me unless I signed a four-picture deal. I remember my agent saying to me, "Look, if you're prepared to lose it, then we can say, sorry, we'll sign only one picture at a time." I was not prepared to lose it.

Playboy: Were those four pictures to be whatever Stark decided?

Streisand: In essence, yes. I don't want to hurt Ray. He got so hurt by one line that Pierson attributed to me, I felt terrible. We go through periods where we love and hate each other. He's a real character, an original.

Playboy: In a few of those pictures you did while under contract to Stark, you didn't sing. Is it a myth that when you don't sing in a movie, it won't do as well as when you do sing?

Streisand: Yeah, it is a myth. Because I did four films in a row that were not unsuccessful: The Owl and the Pussycat, What's Up, Doc?, The Way We Were and, in its own stupid way, For Pete's Sake. The only one that wasn't a success was Up the Sandbox, which I was really proud of.

Playboy: Whose idea was it to do The Way We Were--yours or Stark's?

Streisand: He sent me a 50-page treatment of it by Arthur Laurents and I decided I wanted to do it. I fell in love with it instantly.

Playboy: If we can get back to the myths for a moment: One of the standard ones about you is that you are considered to be the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

Streisand: If I worked all the time perhaps, but I don't. In other words, the highest money you can get is in concerts, which I don't do, because they frighten me. For one night, you can make what you would get for a week of acting in a movie. But then. I just read in a magazine--I don't know if you can believe it--that Marlon Brando got $2,000,000 for ten days' work [in the film Superman]. You know what that is? Two hundred thousand dollars a day!

Playboy: Do you think you can get that for ten days' work?

Streisand: God, I never heard of such things. It's wonderful. I'd probably do it, too, if I could get it. But I don't know. It would depend on the part.

Playboy: Isn't it also a little indecent?

Streisand: But Marlon Brando, I believe, is the finest actor who ever lived. To me, he's a phenomenon. He was my idol when I was 13 years old. He has done enough good work to last for two lifetimes. What people don't understand is the pain of it all, the pain of performing, the pain of getting up in front of the cast and the crew and delving into your own guts and exposing yourself. And he knows that pain and he doesn't choose to act, except, perhaps, for money now. Which is a very valid reason. I mean, in his position and point in life, where he would like to relax and live on his island in Tahiti and be left alone.

Playboy: Do you feel that the quality of Brando's work has declined?

Streisand: Well, I think that his body of work has probably been done. Unless something like The Godfather inspires him to come out of semiretirement, stuff his cheeks and do a tape to get a part. There aren't that many parts that one wants to play.

Playboy: Do you think you might ever act with him?

Streisand: That would be my dream.

Playboy: Does he know that?

Streisand: Yes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this?

Playboy: It would be a tough set, you and Brando, considering your reputed temperaments.

Streisand: You would be amazed. [Laughs] If you're talking about truly talented people, usually there is no false temperament. Tension is high on sets. You're priming your inner life to be reviewed in front of this camera. All sorts of things are happening--people are yelling, laughing, grips upstairs are just idly reading a newspaper, the lights keep burning out, somebody has to go to the bathroom--while you're, like, in gear. You're very easily set off. You're an emotional charge. Whether you believe it or not, I am not a temperamental person. I constantly am around people who are temperamental--that means they get crazy for the moment, they're going to walk off, and then they calm down and come back. I never do that. I never walk off. I keep my calm. I have to. I don't operate that way, with temperament.

Playboy: But don't you bring out the temperament in others?

Streisand: Perhaps. Yes, that could be. What I'm talking about is the diva image about me. And that's just absolute bullshit.

Playboy: A lot of people will find your statement that you're not a temperamental person difficult to swallow. For instance, there were a lot of stories about blowups between you and Kris Kristofferson on the set of A Star Is Born.

Streisand: I don't want to discuss all the intimate details, but we had only two major fights during the whole film--and I don't think that's much, considering how difficult it is for people to agree on everything. One was before we started filming: the second happened on an enormously tense and emotionally explosive day: We were filming a live concert, which couldn't be reshot. The press was there while we rehearsed it, and it was just unfortunate timing. I was totally petrified and insecure about performing that day. I had to get up in front of 70,000 kids who had come to hear Peter Frampton, and I didn't know whether I'd be booed off the stage. And Kris and I fought that day.

Playboy: You don't feel you overpowered him on the screen?

Streisand: No, I don't. I wanted us to be equal--otherwise, you don't have much of a love story. It was essential to the film that Kris be fantastic.

But what interested me most about the movie was the woman issue. In the old version, the characters never fought or disagreed; the female character was willing to give up her career for her man; she used his name at the end. I wouldn't do that. I don't think women should do that. I was interested in being more sexually aggressive in this film--a different character than I've ever played before. I wanted to portray her as taking what she wants, something that's a big thing for women today, especially sexually. So many women you hear about never have orgasms. It's a matter of taking for your own pleasure. In our first love scene in Star, I wanted to be a sort of Clint Eastwood--you know, the guy always takes his belt off. That's why I have her being on top. Why should a man always be the one shown opening his pants first?

Playboy: How did Kristofferson finally feel about the film?

Streisand: He cried when I showed it to him. He said that it changed his life and he has since given up drinking. I had pushed him in this film and he was proud of his work. That made me very happy.

Playboy: What's your relationship with Kris like now?

Streisand: We're good friends. We're closer today than ever before.

Playboy: All told, you appear to be denying many of the stories about flare-ups between you and your co-stars and directors.

Streisand: Absolutely. Willie Wyler and I had a great relationship. We respected and loved each other, which is contrary to what's been written about us. With Redford, we listened to each other's ideas, we inspired each other, it was fun. It's a wonderful experience to work with someone who's creative. Why don't you ask Sydney Pollack, Irvin Kershner, Peter Bogdanovich if they'd ever work with me again? I hate sounding defensive, but I feel like I'm on trial. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to work with a fine director and trust him, to only have to worry about what you're doing as an actress and not the whole film. I like to work with people who know something I don't know. It sounds egotistical, but I don't mean it to be. I just don't want to be hampered by my own limitations!

Playboy: What would Robert Altman say? In his Playboy Interview, he claimed he once tossed you out of a screening room for insulting him.

Streisand: Now I know why your interviews are so tough: You're putting me in a position of doing unto others what they've been doing unto me. Let me answer that as concisely as I can. Years ago, I took my son to a screening of his father's picture The Long Goodbye, which was directed by Altman. I didn't know how violent the film was going to be--totally unsuitable for a five-year-old child. I finally felt I had to take him out of the screening room. Later that day, I called Altman to apologize and explain why we had left. I don't think he ever forgave me or said a nice thing about me since. I wonder why he has the need to put down other professional people as well as myself; I can't understand or respect this.

Playboy: When you get into these hassles with people, how conscious are you of being a woman, rather than a performer? When you were talking about being sexually aggressive in A Star Is Born, you seemed to be defining aggression in the sense that feminists have been using it. Are you, in fact, a feminist?

Streisand: It's funny, I never thought about the women's movement while I was moving as a woman. I didn't even realize that I was fighting this battle all the time. I just took it very personally; I didn't even separate it from the fact that I was a woman having a hard time in a male society. Then they started to burn the bras and I thought it was ridiculous, although I now understand it in the whole picture of revolution--one has to go to these crazy extremes to come back to the middle. Actually, I believe women are superior to men, I don't even think we're equal.

Playboy: That sounds like a female chauvinist talking. How are women superior?

Streisand: You would have to read The Natural Superiority of Women, by Ashley Montagu, in which he says the biological facts show that emotionally and constitutionally, among many other things, women are stronger than men. What is wonderful about the book is that it is designed to bring the sexes closer together. There is a constant war beween men and women that is largely complicated by ignorance, and Montagu shows statistically that men have more heart attacks, ulcers, nervous breakdowns and suicides. Their façade is killing them. I have enormous compassion for men, which really came into focus with the birth of my own son. This little boy who wanted to be held and comforted and soothed has to grow up in a world where he cannot cry because it is "unmanly." I think women are further along with their own liberation. We accept the fact that women can be weak yet strong, soft yet tough, shy yet aggressive. But there's much to say on the subject, much to discuss; it's an article all in itself. In the end, I think we are two slightly different animals who need the same things--mothering and fathering, love, understanding and respect.

Playboy: If you walked into a feminist meeting, do you think you would be attacked or accepted?

Streisand: That all depends on what kind of feminists you're talking about. I have no idea. I'm not an intellectual. I'm not as well informed as I'd like to be. I lead a kind of sheltered life, which I'm trying to change.

Playboy: Do you think the way you've projected yourself on the screen has done anything for the cause of women's rights?

Streisand: I would hope so. I gather from the letters I receive from women that Star encouraged them or inspired them to take more control of their own lives, to do something for themselves, to believe in themselves.

Playboy: Before we started talking about the people you've worked with, we were discussing money. Are you as rich as they say?

Streisand: The myths are big. All those years, people assumed I was making millions, but I was honoring a ten-year contract made in 1964. I have never made as big a salary as many secondary male stars do today. And that's not a myth. The things you read in the paper about million-dollar this and million-dollar that, that's all bullshit. That's not true. Now, it might be true in the next ten years, but it was not true over the past ten years.

Playboy: Do you know how much money you have?

Streisand: Yeah. I know now. And it's one tenth of what everybody thinks. One twenty-fifth! But I didn't for a while. For many, many years, I was like a child--just so focused on my own little work world that all the rest didn't matter. I would earn money and I would lose it in the stock market. I didn't like that hard-earned money being lost. What was I earning it for? I never knew what was really going on. I never really read the contracts. I never understood the deals. I didn't care! Now I'm at another point in my life, where I want to know what's going on. And I want to take responsibility for it, because I see a lot of times it's not handled the way I want it to be handled. In order to feel responsible for your own actions, you've got to take an interest. There's just no other way. A lot of the fights that Jon had with me in the beginning of our relationship were because I wasn't in control of myself enough. He's encouraged me to take more control of myself, not less.

Playboy: You've obviously taken his advice, especially since you virtually codirected A Star Is Born, which involved a great deal of control. How comfortable are you in that sort of situation?

Streisand: It's a struggle, it's a very big inner conflict. Part of me wants to direct films, because I have a total vision of things I work on and would like to have carried out. On the other hand, I'm very fragile emotionally; I'm not strong; I take it all so seriously, so hard, it becomes so painful to me. I get palpitations, I get ill, I get sick to my stomach, I get terrible headaches. I just become a mess. So then I say, What do I need this aggravation for? It's much easier just to act. If I ever recuperate from my last experience, I might try it again.

Playboy: But you do, in fact, exercise control over your projects. Don't you even control what still photographs may be taken on the sets of your movies?

Streisand: Of course I've had control over my photographs. Every star, every actor who has his name above a title controls his own still photographs. That's the way it is. If they choose to give that up, that's out of the norm. And just think about it, if somebody was clicking away pictures of you while you were working, wouldn't you want to see them? And wouldn't you want to choose the ones to be shown? These people take pictures and it's your taste against theirs. Do you ever see the pictures they think are good? I would rather be wrong but have my own taste on the line.

Playboy: What do you look for when you choose your photographs? What facial features do you think are good and bad?

Streisand: I know what you're doing; you want me to talk about my looks. But I would feel like an idiot talking about my eyebrows!

Playboy: Well. . . .

Streisand: [Laughing]: All right. I think I have a good mouth. And not bad eyebrows.

Playboy: How about your ears?

Streisand: I think they're cute.

Playboy: Do you think your nose looks better from one side than from the other?

Streisand: It's better from the left. From the right, it looks much longer.

Playboy: You may be the only one who notices.

Streisand: Really? To me it's so entirely different. It's not like I have a perfect face and I can be photographed from any angle. Nor, for that matter, could some of the old-time film stars. The difference was, they were carefully lighted. I believe in taking that kind of care myself. I don't think they can afford to pay that much attention nowadays. It's more realistic. It's not a glamorous era.

Playboy: Your face is among the most recognizable in the world. Does that become a problem when you go out? Or are you able to be anonymous?

Streisand: It's half and half. Most of the time, people don't know it's me. They think I'm too small or too short, or what would I be doing on a public beach, where I sometimes go? If I were Barbra Streisand, would I be on a-public beach? So they look at me kind of funny, or they say, "Boy, you look a lot like her." They don't even ask me if I am her. And I say. "Yeah, yeah, I've been told that before." Sometimes I do these elaborate lies: "No. I'm not her. What would I be doing here if I were her? I wish I had her money. Ha, ha, ha." Sometimes it's easier to just tell the truth. "Yes. I am her." But it is a pain in the ass to have to sign things.

In my growing-up process. I now admit I am Barbra Streisand. Once, I took my son to a gym class and this little eight-year-old girl comes up to me and says. "You look like Barbra Streisand." Feeling mature. I said. "I am." She looked at me for a long time and finally said. "No, you're not." I told her. "Kid, you won't believe it, but for years I've been denying who I am. Now that I've decided as an adult to admit it. you come up and tell me you don't believe it!"

Playboy: What's your definition of the word fame?

Streisand: Not being left alone.

Playboy: Sounds like you might have had nightmares about the public and its perception of Barbra Streisand.

Streisand: Oh, yeah. My biggest nightmare is that I'm driving alone in a car and I get sick and have to go to the hospital. I'd say. "Please, help me," and the people would say. "Hey, you look like. . . ." And I'm dying while they're talking and wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand.

Playboy: Why do you think you've managed to keep hold of yourself under all those public pressures? After all. you weren't much older than Freddie Prinze when you became lamous.

Streisand: You know, it's probably the same thing that makes me not the greatest actress ever. There's a certain lack of control that can lead to a kind of greatness, which can also lead to insanity. And I don't have that. As I've said, I'm too controlled.

Playboy: Do you fear dying?

Streisand: Yeah. My father died of a cerebral hemorrhage at my age. I'm afraid to ask my mother, it's either 34 or 35. It's a big fear.

Playboy: Do you think you'll die young?

Streisand: I don't know. I think that you don't really live until you're not afraid to die.

(continued on page 193) Playboy Interview (continued from page 107)

Playboy: Then a lot of people aren't really living.

Streisand: That's right. Until you're not afraid to lose life, I don't believe that you can really live it. Live it to its fullest.

Playboy: How would you live your life if you weren't afraid to lose it?

Streisand: I would travel all over the world and live in all societies. I would go every place. My dream is to be the girl at 15 who got on that freighter. That was my dream: to go on a freighter and land in Morocco or Algiers for $135. I talked to a girl who said that when she was 19, she had traveled around the world, and I thought, What a fascinating life she's led and what did I do? And my friends say to me, "Barbra, what were you doing at 19?" Oh, yeah, I was on the verge of big success: I mean, I was a big success in I Can Get It for You Wholesale. But, to me, that's not the same as that girl traveling all over the world.

Playboy: There's a quality of dissatisfaction in a lot of what you've described about yourself. Do you feel you have yet to achieve on the screen a performance you can truly be proud of?

Streisand: Yes. Although there are moments I like in Funny Girl, The Way We Were and A Star Is Born. You know what I think is the best thing I have ever done? It was a scene from Romeo and Juliet at the Actors Studio two years ago. two years ago, I said to my agent that I wanted to play Romeo and Juliet, would she call up the networks and see if they were interested in a special? They weren't! They said, "Does she sing in it? Who's playing Romeo?" How big a star do you have to be before you can play Romeo and Juliet on TV? I was so discouraged.

Playboy: You've been claiming since 1963 that you'd like to play Juliet. Realistically, do you think you will ever do it?

Streisand: I don't think I'll ever play her. Where am I going to do it? I was talking to the Shakespeare Company in Connecticut for years and the one in England, but I always chickened out. Maybe because I had such a terrible experience on the stage in Funny Girl.

Playboy: How do you see Juliet?

Streisand: She was a spoiled brat. She was 14, she was in love with love but knew nothing about it. I know what it was like. I used to dream and cry in my pillow. I used to be Medea and cry in my room; it was fantastic! And that's the kind of love I think Juliet had for Romeo. It's not real, that's why it's so passionate.

Playboy: How do you think she was sexually at that age?

Streisand: She was probably a real horny kid. Romeo probably had had other girls, but it was her first time. She was like a little animal. When I played Juliet at the Actors Studio and the nurse finally tells me she's set up a meeting with Romeo, I actually froze. Uh, oh, my God, married? Really? Could I cope with that? Onstage, I became numb, and I believe that was the right feeling.

Playboy: Were you able to relate to that part because of your own sexual frustrations at that age?

Streisand: In my family, sex was taboo. You don't screw anybody until you get married, you don't hold hands, you don't kiss, because you'll get a disease. It was all so awful that I had to develop a fantasy life. Unfortunately, growing up like that sometimes creates problems with the idea of sex and love as being one thing rather than two. I was very sheltered.

Playboy: Where did you learn about sex?

Streisand: When I was 11 years old, I used to baby-sit for Muriel Choy. When I was 12, I started working in her Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. I was a cashier. Also, I showed people to their tables. Muriel Choy used to tell me about things. About love and life and sex.

Playboy: What did she tell you?

Streisand: I can't tell you! I remember asking her, "Is the man always on top?" And she said, "Not necessarily." And I said, "What?!" I would ask her things that my mother never told me. Just about being a woman.

Playboy: How old were you when you had your first sexual experience?

Streisand: Eighteen.

Playboy: Was it anything like you expected it to be?

Streisand: Yes and no.

Playboy: Do you remember it at all?

Streisand: A lot, yeah.

Playboy: Do you have a lot of sexual fantasies?

Streisand: Sure, don't you?

Playboy: Absolutely. You tell us yours, we'll tell you ours.

Streisand: Oh, no! My private domain.

Playboy: Do you feel that the Kinsey Report is accurate, that women reach their sexual peak around 30?

Streisand: I'm no authority, but I think it should even get better. That's another thing--you could never imagine your parents screwing. I hope our children can. It's a nice thing, it's not anything to be hidden.

Playboy: When did you become a sexually aggressive woman?

Streisand: In just the past three years. With my relationship with Jon. When you have a relationship that really has love and trust, trust to be yourself, with your bad and good qualities, that's a very liberating thing. To be yourself. With no images. I was always playing games with men. That image game. And I never even thought that I counted. I was always trying to please them. In the song Lullaby for Myself, the lyric says, "Your aim becomes to please yourself and not to aim to please."

Playboy: How innovative are you sexually?

Streisand:What? Well . . . I do have some erotic art books!

Playboy: Do you learn from them?

Streisand: Absolutely.

Playboy: How often are you the one to initiate sexual activities?

Streisand: We're equal, honey, we're equal.

Playboy: Have you ever seduced a man?

Streisand: I think all women seduce men. But just to be sexually aggressive, to call a guy up for a date, I don't think it would work. I think most men couldn't handle it. They couldn't get behind it.

Playboy: Do you think there could be a female Warren Beatty, whose image--

Streisand: Absolutely. I think I know one.

Playboy: Could she be accepted the same way Beatty is in this society? In other words, could Barbra Streisand cavort with men the same way Beatty supposedly does with women and still be accepted by the public?

Streisand: You mean like a Doña Juana? It would be very interesting. She could probably get away with it nowadays, although be terribly frowned upon. But so is the Warren Beatty character frowned upon. Even though the other guys envy him.

Playboy: You were once romantically linked with Beatty, weren't you?

Streisand: One of my flings.

Playboy: How many flings have you had?

Streisand: Just a few.

Playboy: What about your relationship with Canada's prime minister Pierre Trudeau before his marriage? He escorted you to the Arts Center in Ottawa once and jumped from the limousine to open the door. Did you ever think a prime minister would be opening doors for you?

Streisand: No. It happened to be overwhelming.

Playboy: Did he ask you to marry him?

Streisand: I don't want to answer that. But he's an extraordinary man. He's a wonderful leader and a very young-minded, spirited, hip figure who goes to parliament in sandals.

Playboy: Did you ever reflect on what it would be like to be first lady of Canada?

Streisand: Oh, yeah, I thought it would be fantastic. I'd have to learn how to speak French. I would do only movies made in Canada. I had it all figured out. I would campaign for him and become totally politically involved in all the causes, abortion and whatever.

Playboy: What made you change your mind?

Streisand: Certain realities.

Playboy: Would you ever have considered getting him to change his career?

Streisand: No, I would never have wanted him to. His life was too important to a whole country, to a world. I don't feel mine is that significant. It's significant in that it gives people a fantasy life or some pleasure, but it's not like being a prime minister of a country.

Playboy: Do you still have any contact with him?

Streisand: No, not anymore.

Playboy: When you meet men, are you able to be yourself or do you present a front until you feel comfortable?

Streisand: I used to always play parts with men--I had to be sweet and nice and all that, but I always found that all the men who really had crushes on me were the ones that I was totally myself with. While I didn't respond, they always seemed to like me when I was just me. Crude at times, frightened, sweet, tough.

Playboy: Is that how you see yourself?

Streisand: I was always confused about myself. I was never in the middle. People thought I was either ugly or beautiful, fantastic or nothing; they loved me or they hated me. I was on the Best Dressed list at the same time I was on the Worst Dressed list. It's always been that way. When I was 15, 16, I was very serious at times and then very stupid and funny and giggly; fickle and yet devoted; childish but very mature. I used to fight it, then you realize that you're all those things and it's all OK. Now I accept it.

Playboy: What part of your personality do you prefer?

Streisand: I like it when I'm not so serious. When I can have more fun.

Playboy: How much of your time are you serious?

Streisand: Too much. I wish I could lighten up a little.

Playboy: Do actors, in general, like themselves?

Streisand: No, I don't think so. That's why they always want to play parts, to hide behind the lives of other people.

Playboy: Do you?

Streisand: I like myself sometimes and other times I don't. It's getting better. I used to really dislike myself. Now I'm getting to like myself more. My whole life I was always concerned with being looked down upon as an actress. I always felt that certain people thought, Oh, you're an actress, ah. Cheap. Vulgar. Loose. Immoral. Amoral. A kind of Victorian way of thinking. It was something I always felt, reading about Bernhardt or about Duse. In our society, people want to be friendly with actresses, they're so charming, so amusing. It's all so condescending, like having a clown, having this toy.

Playboy: Speaking of toys, didn't you once consider a role opposite King Kong?

Streisand: That was Jon's idea. He had this funny idea of an erotic King Kong. And I thought, Yeah, the ad could be great: "No Leading Man Big Enough!" Isn't that funny?

Playboy: Along those lines, Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote that you are often too big and aggressive for most of the films you appear in and for most of the men who play opposite you. How do you feel about that?

Streisand: Maybe I should have done King Kong! I don't know what the fuck he's talking about, do you? Look, you're the questioner--you could make me look good, you know. You could say, "But isn't it interesting, Barbra, how every one of your leading men has gone on to become a big star after working with you? Or practically all of them? You know, they don't seem to catapult to fame until they do a picture with you."

Playboy: Would you say that's been the case with Kristofferson?

Streisand: Wait a minute. I was only joking.

Playboy: No, you weren't. Don't play modest.

Streisand: Well, I don't like tooting my own horn, but I think you could say it was true.

Playboy: At the same time, you were accused of being a camera hog in A Star Is Born, cutting Kristoflerson out of a lot of the movie.

Streisand: Another accusation--and another falsehood. I don't come in till halfway through the second reel. Kris has about six scenes without me at the beginning. Then, during the movie, he has at least eight more scenes that I am not in. Many of the scenes I cut out were my scenes. I studied the guitar for a year so I could play it in the movie, then I cut out the scene. And yet, it's true, after he dies as a character, I'm in the last three scenes alone. If that's hogging the camera. . . . It's just not true.

Playboy: Back to your leading men catapulting to fame after working with you. Would you make that claim for Redford? Jimmy Caan? Ryan O'Neal?

Streisand: I think they all would have become big sooner or later.

Playboy: And you made it sooner?

Streisand: [Shrugs]

Playboy: What about another of your leading men, Walter Matthau, who said that working with you in Hello, Dolly! made him physically ill?

Streisand: I don't like talking about him. And, again, I don't want to get caught up in speculating on what other people may or may not have gossiped about me. Anyway, it was a long time ago.

Playboy: Do you think he felt threatened by you?

Streisand: Perhaps. It was like he was this pro and I was this kid who didn't have any right to any opinions. I had come to Hollywood with a four-picture deal and I had never had a screen test. It obviously infuriated him as well as a lot of other people in Hollywood.

Playboy: As has your desire for perfection, it seems.

Streisand: It's stupid. It's like ego and conceit. To be a perfectionist sounds like an insult. It's only striving for perfection, it's not perfection itself, that is important.

Playboy: Have you ever done anything you thought was perfect?

Streisand: I don't think so, and probably if I did, I wouldn't like it, because it would be too sterile, too inhuman. Because what I believe is perfection is imperfection.

Playboy: Well, what is perfection to you?

Streisand: Perfection is like a wine-velvet snapdragon or a tuberous begonia, the smell of a gardenia or the texture of a just-ripened avocado. A Gallé blown vase. A piece of Walter or Argy-Rousseau pâte de verre glass. A painting by Van Gogh. A child when it's born. Perfect is too small a word for it, it's a miracle. It's God. It's mind-blowing, it's more than perfect. And yet it shits and pisses. There's no such thing as perfection, because everything seems to fall apart sooner or later.

Playboy: Including us. Does aging bother you?

Streisand: No. I mean, I don't like the idea of having a big double chin or anything, but I don't care about lines, wrinkles or playing the parts. I want to be able to control my body--that's my goal--so it doesn't control me.

Playboy: When does your body control you?

Streisand: When I get really frightened, I literally pee in my pants.

Playboy: Does that still happen?

Streisand: Yeah. The last time it happened was when I got caught in Customs. I didn't report a pair of boots I bought, and the guy went through my purse and found the slip for the boots. I couldn't believe it. I was dumb enough to have the receipt in my bag and he found it and said, "What's this?" I peed in my pants.

Playboy: How old were you?

Streisand: How old was I? It was last year, what are you talking about? By the way, I claim everything now, even a pack of Japanese gum.

Playboy: Are you planning to get involved in another project soon or are you still coming down from your three-year involvement with Star and the album, Superman, you've just finished recording?

Streisand: I want to have the luxury of doing nothing. I'd like to take the same energy that I put into my work and put that into my life. I'm interested in a growing self-awareness that will help me touch and be touched by people. I want to become more involved with the world around me. Grow as a person, a mother, an unmarried wife, a lover, a friend. There is definitely an art to living and I want to study it. I want to be able to spend time with my son. Concrete blocks of time. I'd like to go back to school someday. Also, I haven't seen many of the old classical films. I would like to study some films now. I want to cook and learn to crochet; I want to have the time to sit down on an afternoon and read a book.

Playboy: What books would you like to read?

Streisand: I'm into Krishnamurti and books on health foods; I'm reading about the mind, meditation, the body, physical fitness--all forms of self-improvement. But when I'm sitting on a plane and I'm nervous about flying, they don't help me much. So I love to read great dirty novels.

Playboy: What about watching television? Is there anything you like to see?

Streisand: I don't like TV. I don't like violence. Every show is violent. I like the news at night, except I can't stand the first minutes, when, to get your attention, they give you the horror stories. It sickens me.

Playboy: What about newspapers? Do you read them?

Streisand: No.

Playboy: So, if you don't read newspapers, you're seeing only the television version of what's going on in the world.

Streisand: Yeah. I don't like to read newspapers. Also, I've talked to so many people in the political world who give totally different accounts of what's supposedly happening, so I don't believe what I read. You read about oil embargoes and killing cattle to raise the prices of meat. I can't fathom this stuff. All these people going hungry in the world and they're killing the cattle? I can't understand that. And it totally depresses me. Just thinking about the weather, the motion in the oceans, the air pollution, the chemicals in the food we eat, the inevitable destruction that nobody seems able to stop, it's just so frightening to me.

Playboy: How much thinking do you do about that?

Streisand: It bothers the hell out of me. When I think of people freezing to death in their cars. What is happening to the world? Haven't the scientists said that we're being drawn away from the sun? What is the explanation for this? Is it the nuclear bomb? Pollution? Is it the ozone in the atmosphere from the spray cans that don't seem to be outlawed? What is it? And where is the good part of the news? We're all animals and we have these violent instincts; why nurture those? Why not nurture the better ones, the more positive, more progressive, more intelligent instincts? Not lose our animalistic passions but channel them into the proper niche--sex or something.

Playboy: What you're saying is that you'd like to see some changes in what we see and read, perhaps some changes in our values, less negative, more positive.

Streisand: Krishnamurti says the only thing constant is change. It is important to change. I wish people understood that.

Playboy: How well do you understand that?

Streisand: I'm always changing; that's why I confuse people. It's so important to me to have no image. None. And if you look at my career, I always try to break my own image. My big fight has always been: Don't put me into a mold, 'cause I'm not going to go into it. Just when you think you can imitate me when my hair's long, I cut it short; when you think my hair's brown, I make it red; when they imitate me with long nails, I cut 'em off. I don't want that kind of success. I want to grow as an artist. As a human being. I'm not interested in images or in being imitated. That's the person who just wants to be a big star, to be imitated, to have a constant image. That is not me.

Playboy: How, then, would you like to be remembered?

Streisand: I'd like to be remembered as a person who took chances. One of the reasons I care about being a movie actress is to be remembered, to be slightly immortal; because I think life is so short that by the time we get to see things with some sense of reality and truth, it's all over. So I'm sure that's why I care so much about making movies: It prolongs your life.

Playboy: Do you have a sense of immortality?

Streisand: Not in a physical way.

Playboy: But you do feel that 100 years from now, you will not be forgotten.

Streisand: I hope not. If the world is still around and there's still an entertainment business, I'd probably be in a book or two.

Playboy: If you could change anything in your past, is there anything you would have done differently?

"Why am I so famous? What am I doing right? What are the others doing wrong?"

"If a man did the same thing I did, he would be called thorough--while a woman is called a ball breaker."

"When people envy me, I think, Oh, God, don't envy me. I have my own pains. Money doesn't wipe that out."

"I hated singing--I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I would have made it any other way."

"The highest money you can get is in concerts, which I don't do, because they frighten me."

"I never thought about the women's movement while I was moving as a woman. I didn't even realize that I was fighting this battle all the time."