With a decades-spanning career in music and film and a lifelong commitment to numerous philanthropic causes, Barbra Streisand is beloved by fans around the world. Among them is SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, The Nanny star whose character, Fran Fine, never missed a moment to fangirl over her favorite performer. In the days leading up to the 30th Annual SAG Awards®, Streisand and Drescher sat down for an Actor to Actor interview, discussing Streisand’s career on the stage, behind the camera and beyond. What follows is an edited version of their conversation.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher: You’re getting the SAG Life Achievement Award. Now, this is the highest honor that your union can give anyone. Congratulations on the award, because it’s a big deal, and it’s so well deserved.
Barbra Streisand: Thank you.
Fran: You’ve been a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and now SAG-AFTRA, since 1961. What is the single most valuable acting lesson that you’ve learned in your career?
Barbra: A great actor has to rely on the truth. ... The audience can feel that. They know when you’re telling the truth. Like, I’m making a new record now — which I can’t talk about — but I have my conductor that breathes with me. He sees me in my booth singing and he’s out there with the orchestra, but he can tell, because I don’t sing the song the same twice.
Fran: Do you watch any of those singing competition shows on TV? The coaches, who are professional, very accomplished singers, are always trying to train these amateur performers to feel what they’re saying. “Tell the story, don’t just do acrobats with your voice.”
Barbra: Exactly. Why do you go high sometimes? It’s only because the character is feeling great love at that moment. That’s why you go high. It’s like, sometimes when I sing it ... I’m not feeling so much love for this character, I may not go for that high note. You have to be in the moment.
Fran: Have you ever, though, had to work with an actor that doesn’t listen, but is just waiting to say his next line?
Barbra: Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s somebody I did a movie with, and I put something in that wasn’t in the script, and the guy wouldn’t look because it was his wrong side; something like that. That’s not being in the moment.
Fran: No, it’s not organic.
Barbra: I was doing a movie with Bob Redford, The Way We Were; we had to be very observant. Sometimes I smiled when I said something, sometimes he laughed. We both had to react in the moment. You have a preconception always about how you’re going to play something, but then, life intrudes. And life is spectacular, right?
Fran: I wanna talk a little bit about Yentl because that was an unbelievable achievement on so many different levels. First of all, you wore so many hats in the movie. You got the Golden Globe for Best Director.
Barbra: Which I was very shocked to get because I was up against great directors, I mean, really wonderful directors.
Fran: And you said it took you 15 years to get that movie made.
Barbra: Yeah. Because who wanted to do a movie about, you know, a Jewish girl who wanted to study Talmud, and she had to dress as a man in order to get into school?
Fran: You were breaking the ceiling in filmmaking for women by having the tenacity to say, “I can do more than just be in front of the camera.”
Barbra: Exactly.
Fran: So did you realize in the moment that you were doing something that was even bigger than the sum of its parts? Because you were leading women and girls into a future that looked different than the one that you came out of.
Barbra: I think it has nothing to do with male or female. If you have a vision, it’s a complete vision. That’s why I had to do all those jobs. I had a responsibility; I had that on my shoulders.
Fran: To women and girls, or just to the movie?
Barbra: No, to women and girls and the movie. It’s all one thing. In other words, I have a vision, and people are frightened that I can’t control financial things. I enjoyed that position: having to say, “Okay, if we shoot today and it’s gray out, but I want lights on the water, I want the sun to be shining, to give us a hopeful feeling when Yentl is crossing that little river to go to her school,” I have to weigh that. I’m weighing; tell me the cost. I’m capable of, you know, handling finances. What will it cost if I put it off till tomorrow and wait for the sun? In other words, I loved balancing the reality of the budget to the aesthetic. That’s just a grown-up [thing]. I’ve noticed — because [I] watch a lot of films, and there are so many more women directing now. It’s like, it used to be such a shock, “directed by a woman,” but in the last few years, many women have been directing movies.
Fran: And I think television opened that up first. There are a lot of women directors that are in television, both in one-hour and multi-cam, which is what I did, and I directed some of those.
Barbra: You know, I made a documentary about the first women in film. When I was making Yentl, I did research about these women. And even [though] D.W. Griffith is called the father of film, these women were making films in 1916, before he made his great film.
Fran: That’s why they call it his-story, not her-story.
Barbra: That’s right; very good point.
Fran: So you’ve done TV, you’ve done Broadway and, of course, you’ve done film and you’ve done them all well. But is there something that you like the best?
Barbra: Well, I love film but when I was in Funny Girl [onstage] — oh, my god! I love the experimental part of the job, meaning —
Fran: “Putting it together,” like Sondheim said.
Barbra: Yes, putting it together. We had 41 different last scenes for Funny Girl. Opening night was the 42nd — good number too, by the way — that we’d closed the show with that. You know, the 42nd version. I loved the different versions. I loved experimenting!
Fran: Of course, it speaks volumes for you as a director. ... So you started in comedy and then you transitioned into drama. They say that comic actors make the best dramatic actors. What do you have to say to all that?
Barbra: Life is both. Life is funny at times and life is sad at times, and the most interesting comedies have something serious at the core. Tragedy sometimes starts with a clown, right?
Fran: Needless to say, especially in our industry, there are a lot of people that carry the burden of insecurities. How do you leverage your own last scenes for Funny Girl. How do you leverage your own insecurities as a help rather than a hindrance?
Barbra: I would be suspicious of any actor who wasn’t, somewhere, insecure. It’s part of the game, because the actor has to expose his inner self, his soul, his secrets. And that makes him very vulnerable, which is great, allowing that. Now, I mean, I can be both things: I can be very confident — well, no, I’ve never gone on stage [confidently]. When a new concert comes up, I always think, “Well, they won’t come,” or “They’ll walk
out.” I have that [insecurity], but I also know that there is strength and confidence in even being insecure. And having the confidence to be insecure as well.
Fran: Right. Have the confidence to be vulnerable and own it. It’s trying to mask it or be afraid of it happening that’s the torture.
Barbra: I mean, I’m confident in my singing a song about vulnerability, but I have to be open to that part of me that is singing ... Nobody’s just insecure or nobody’s that confident. Except assholes. ... Confidence, such total confidence, is kind of a turnoff. Do you know what I mean?
Fran: Definitely.
Barbra: You know what I would suggest to anybody? Examine your dreams. [They are] the key to your unconscious before you are ready for it to be conscious ...
Fran: You love working with actors. What is your process to get [your vision] out of them?
Barbra: Well, I’ll give you an example. When I was doing The Mirror Has Two Faces, [with] Lauren Bacall ... It’s a scene where she is up all night; I’m her daughter. It was the night before she had to film it, and I came in to just rehearse it with her. And she was using a toothpick, and she didn’t know her lines very well. ... I said to her, “Forget the lines. You don’t even have to know the lines. Just tell me what you feel about this. What do you feel about how you’ve spent your life and what you didn’t do? What you didn’t get done? What are your regrets, in a sense?” She spoke from her heart. She spoke from her truth. Her memories of what she was like as a younger actress in the movies. I got the performance that I wanted, [and] we didn’t have
to shoot it in the morning.
Another moment I wanted where she said something, “It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful,” but her reaction when we were filming was [flatly], “It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.” And I said, “Turn off the cameras.” ... [And then I asked her] “When you were in those movies, like when you first met Humphrey Bogart andhe became your husband and stuff, and you were just wanted by everybody and every director, what was that like?” She had to think about it, and very quietly, she said ... [emotionally] “It was wonderful.”
Fran: And that’s what we see in that movie.
Barbra: That’s in the movie, and in [another] scene as well. And she was nominated, and she got the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. I had to get to understand her, to know her, to love her ... Do you know what I mean?
Fran: As a director, you have to be a little parental, right?
Barbra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be loving; you have to love them in a way.
Fran: You’ve made three movies, you’ve received 14 Academy Award nominations. Many of the actors achieved some of the best performances that you got out of them. What would you like to be remembered for?
Barbra: Well, I would say my films, my records, my book now and my philanthropy. Philanthropy is very, very important in my life.
Fran: I’m so glad you brought that up because that was an area that we never got to.
Barbra: Yeah, it’s important. I was able to start my foundation ...
Fran: The Streisand Foundation.
Barbra: ... in 1986, when I was horrified by what happened at Chernobyl. And that’s why I agreed to sing again: to raise money for five Democratic senators that took over the Senate. We became Democratic. I knew that [they] shared my values, and [were] against nuclear proliferation.
It was for women’s rights. It was for protection of the environment because I was scared in 1986 about what was happening to the earth. ... What struck me and made me very happy was George Shultz, who was Reagan’s secretary of state, came up to me and said, “Thank you.” And I said, “For what?” You know, I thought he liked my singing or my acting or my movies, whatever. He said to me, “No, for what your foundation funded to fight against nuclear proliferation.”
Now that is something that I’m very proud of. Do you see what I mean, like — just trying to save the fucking world.
Fran: Yes. You’re a very special woman: very dear, very intelligent and I’m wildly impressed by you.
Barbra: [laughs] Well, I’m impressed by you, too. We’ll meet again, I’m sure.
Fran: I hope so.
This item originally featured in the SAG-AFTRA spring 2024 magazine.