Barbra Streisand Pulls Back the Curtain on Famous Friends, Lasting Love and More in New Memoir (Exclusive)

Nine hundred and ninety-two pages may seem a hefty weight for a memoir, but when you consider all the lives Barbra Streisand has lived, it makes sense. 

Streisand, 81, has been a Broadway star, an actor. A singer, a director, not to mention a political activist, a wife and a mother. And now, she’s adding another role to her resumé: that of author, as her long-awaited memoir My Name Is Barbra (out Nov. 7) hits shelves.

With her signature wit and the unflinchingly honest acceptance that hindsight is sometimes 20/20, Streisand digs deep into her past, detailing everything from the Brooklyn childhood she spent yearning to please her mother, to her big Broadway break and award-winning turns in films like Funny Girl, A Star Is Born and The Way We Were.

There’s also, of course, musings on her personal life, including high-profile romances and dalliances with stars like Marlon Brando, ex-husband Elliott Gould (with whom she shares son Jason Gould, 56) and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau — which all eventually paved the way for her to find everlasting love with James Brolin, her husband of 25 years.

Here, on her own terms, Streisand spills all on both her reel and real life.

Prologue

Sometimes it felt like my nose got more press than I did. In the cover story in Time magazine, the writer said, “This nose is a shrine.” (Sounds good!) Then he went on, “The face it divides is long and sad, and the look in repose is the essence of hound.” (Not so good.)

So which is it? Am I a Babylonian queen or a basset hound?

Probably both (depending on the angle).

I wish I could say none of this affected me, but it did. Even after all these years, I’m still hurt by the insults and can’t quite believe the praise. I guess when you become famous, you become public property. You’re an object to be examined, photographed, analyzed, dissected . . . and half the time I don’t recognize the person they portray. I’ve never gotten used to it, and I try to avoid reading anything about myself.

Chapter 3 - This Night Could Change My Life

I had already been told by several people that I should get a nose job and cap my teeth. I thought, Isn’t my talent enough? A nose job would hurt and be expensive. Besides, how could I trust anyone to do exactly what I wanted and no. more? I liked the bump on my nose, but should I consider a minor adjustment . . just straighten it slightly at the bottom and take a tiny bit off the tip?

No. It was too much of a risk. And who knew what it might do to my voice?

Once a doctor told me I had a deviated septum . . . maybe that’s why I sound the way I do. Besides, I liked long noses . . . the Italian actress Silvana Mangano had one, and everyone seemed to think she was beautiful.

Chapter 7 - It All Comes Together

People were looking for some sort of rivalry between us. And when they couldn’t find anything, they made it up. I found Judy to be completely generous. We sang a medley of songs, taking turns, and she wasn’t just focused on herself. She watched me and responded to me. She would reach out and brush back a strand of my hair, like a mother. And Judy’s own daughter, Liza Minnelli, says that her mother’s first reaction on hearing me sing was to say, “I’m never going to open my mouth again.” She was like that, very self‑deprecating. And deeply vulnerable.

Judy and I became friends. We spoke on the phone, and she came to one of the rare parties I gave at my New York apartment (four in thirty‑five years). I think she arrived late. And I remember her saying something I never quite understood: “Don’t let them do to you what they did to me.” I should have asked her what she meant, but I didn’t want to appear too nosy.

Six years after we did [The Judy Garland Show], she was dead at the age of forty‑seven.

What a tragedy . . . and such a loss. She was an extraordinary talent.

Chapter 12 - Gotta Move

Frankly, I was just glad it was over, and eager to get back to my dressing room where Marty, Elliott, Cis, and Gracie were all waiting. I was rushing to change out of my costume and get ready for the after‑party when Cis held up a tiny pair of knitted baby booties and announced, “I’m going to be a grandmother.”

Immediately I thought of her eldest son. “Did Jeff get some girl pregnant?”

“No, it’s you!”

“What??!!!”

I had completely forgotten that I had taken a rabbit test with a friend of Cis’s . . . the comedian Jonathan Miller’s wife, Rachel, who was also a doctor. This test is how they used to determine if you were pregnant (but why was a rabbit involved?), and it took a week to get the results. Cis, Elliott, and Gracie all knew, but they deliberately waited to tell me until after the pressure of opening night.

I was so astonished. I went out with my friends to the party, but I spent the rest of the night in a daze. I remember Rex Harrison saying “Congratulations,” and I said, “Thank you,” but for an entirely different reason. I was thinking only about the baby.

The news was a shock. Elliott and I had lived together since I was nineteen, and now I was about to turn twenty‑four. For years I had honestly thought there was something wrong with me, because I had never gotten pregnant. Having a baby seemed like something for other women, not for me. And then I remembered one night, right after I arrived in London for rehearsals. Elliott and I were in our suite at the Savoy Hotel, having an argument about something . . . I can’t remember what. And that led to becoming physical, and then it’s a matter of seduction and resistance and anger and passion . . . I don’t know. And I stopped fighting and just went into my body . . . to feel, to forgive, to share, to be kind, to be vulnerable. And that’s when it happened . . . I could feel the moment when I conceived.

How amazing. I was so happy! I finally felt normal for once!

Chapter 18 - Brando

About three hours into the conversation, he looked into my eyes and said, “I’d like to f--- you.”

I was taken aback. “That sounds awful,” I said.

After a moment of thought, he said, “Okay. Then I’d like to go to a museum with you.”

“Now that’s very romantic. I’d like that.” He’d hit on a fantasy of mine . . . to walk through a museum with someone I was very attracted to and look at great art . . . exploring it together.

Then I remembered his wife in the other room. “What about Tarita? Why did you marry her?” Marlon and I didn’t mince words.

He looked toward the other room and said, after thinking about it, “She’s like a ripe piece of fruit.”

The thing is, I knew exactly what he meant. She was luscious, but was that enough?

We talked about marriage . . . relationships. And then out of the blue he said something that shocked me.

“I don’t think you’re going to be with Elliott much longer.” I was taken aback. “I’m married to him. What do you mean?” “He’s not good‑looking enough for you."

Chapter 17 - Hello, Dolly!

I didn’t want to do the film. I thought I was wrong for the part . . . too young, which seemed obvious. The character in the play is a middle‑aged widow, and Carol Channing was in her midforties when she created the role on Broadway. I think I was only twenty‑four when Ernest Lehman first approached me about taking the part. He would be the movie’s producer and the screenwriter (and had also written the screenplays for West Side Story, The Sound of Music, North by Northwest, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), so I had a lot of respect for him. I just couldn’t understand why he wanted me.

I tried to talk him out of it. I asked him why he wasn’t hiring Carol Channing, and he told me that he had seen footage from Thoroughly Modern Millie and felt her personality was just too big for the screen. So even if I didn’t take the role, there was no way he was going to hire her. Believe me, I wanted him to give it to Carol!

I told him that I thought the story would be more poignant if Dolly was an older woman, lonely after her husband’s death and grasping at what could be her last chance to marry again. He listened politely and pointed out that a woman could become a widow at any age. He said he was sure I could be as poignant as anyone, and he knew I could bring out the comedy in the script. And he couldn’t wait to hear me sing the score.

Chapter 54 - Jim

Deep down, I, too, wanted romance, but I had let my work take over. I tended to use work as a substitute for relationships.

Jim and I met at a point in my life when I had basically given up on finding someone. And frankly, I was all right with being on my own. I had my son, I had great friends to keep me company, my work was fulfilling, and I loved my new house in Malibu overlooking the ocean.

Maybe you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else. ...

I think the real reason our relationship has endured is that we’re both willing to work at it. Jim and I are very different. As he’s said to me, “You’re an expert at looking for what’s wrong, while I’m just happy to wake up in the morning.” (He’ll live much longer than me. He keeps saying he’s going to live to be 100, and recently upped it to 110. He probably will, with that attitude.)

Chapter 56 - Giving Back

On a side note, this was the first time I felt the effect of Hollywood’s unequal pay scale for men and women. I didn’t ask what the other actors were making, but I was definitely hurt when I found out that Dustin was getting three times as much as me, plus a tiny percentage, which is significant on a movie that made $520 million. I was given some excuse about how I had been the last to sign, but the only thing that made me feel better was when my dear friend Ron Meyer, who was the head of Universal, gave me a bonus . . . the first and only time I ever got one. I guess he, too, thought it was unfair.

From MY NAME IS BARBRA by Barbra Streisand, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Barbra Streisand.

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