Barbra Streisand
“I can’t buy you ice cream because you are too ugly,” said Diana Streisand to her daughter Barbara.
Growing up, Barbara was scrawny and cross-eyed. Her appearance was in sharp contrast with her half-sister Roslyn who was the pretty one.
Barbara would later drop an “a” to her name to become the Barbra Streisand we know today. At the age of 18, she started singing in nightclubs, and soon her reputation for possessing a magnificent voice and shining personality would spread in Greenwich Village.
Always billed herself as “an actress who can sing”, Barbra started getting her foot in the theatre.
“She's very talented, but God, she's so ugly. What are we going to do with her?' A theatre company owner pondered a dilemma after meeting Barbra.
Even though you don’t agree with her mother and the theatre company owner, you have to admit Barbra’s looks were unconventional for her time. Acting agents and casting directors in the 1960s looked for the likes of Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve, and Natalie Wood.
Still, Barbra managed to secure a breakthrough stage role as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It For You Wholesale in 1962. Her solo performance in the second act was the show stealer. Although the musical was not a huge commercial success, a star was born.
Two years later, she landed the role of Fanny Brice in the stage production of Funny Girl after the role was passed up by Mary Martin, Anne Bancroft, and Eydie Gormé. Barbra embodied the spirit of Fanny Brice and added much more of her own to the role. The cast album was a commercial success and produced two of her signature songs, People and Don’t Rain On My Parade.
When Funny Girl was adapted into a movie in 1968, Barbra was a natural choice to reprise the role. The audience could hardly tell whether the playful and bombastic portrayal was scripted, or they had just witnessed a natural improvisational flair. Her looks were never the issue for the critics as her strong performance outshone everything else. Barbra went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress the following year.
Throughout the 1970s, Barbra Streisand established herself as one of the most successful film actresses. She would appear in 9 more movies, including The Way We Were (1973) which earned her another nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and A Star Is Born (1976), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Song, Evergreen.
Say what you will about Barbra Streisand’s looks. The undeniable truth is Barbra creates her own allure by maximizing her talent and charisma. Other people’s critique of her appearance does not deviate her from the path to greatness.
Perhaps the most fitting summation of Streisand’s potent novelty came courtesy of the great Pauline Kael, one of Streisand’s most ardent champions and defenders. “It’s been commonly said that the musical Funny Girl was a comfort to people because it carried the message that you do not need to be pretty to succeed,” wrote Kael in her review for The New Yorker. “That is nonsense; the ‘message’ of Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl is that talent is beauty. And this isn't some comforting message for plain people; it's what show business is all about…”
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