Barbra Streisand Developed Stage Fright After Insults About ‘Funny Girl’

Barbra Streisand’s new memoir, My Name Is Barbra, will be out in November, giving fans a peek into her life in her own words. In the publisher’s words, “The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress.”

The multiple award-winning actress and singer detailed the ups and downs of her career, including how she developed stage fright during a Broadway production of Funny Girl. Her co-star, Sydney Chaplin, chipped away her confidence as he “jeered” at her during their performance.

The Book

Vanity Fair Magazine shared snippets of the actress’s new book, detailing the event that marked Barbra’s last appearance on New York’s Broadway. Barbra, who was married to Elliott Gould at the time, felt guilty about a “flirtation” she was having with Sydney, Charlie Chaplin’s son, and put a stop to it. This angered Sydney, and so “onstage, every night, he began cursing and jeering at her, so quietly that no one but Streisand could hear him.”

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Sydney’s antics “made her physically sick and threw her concentration,” and although she opened the show in London, it was her last time on Broadway. “She went through with the rest of the production and made good on her commitment to open the show in London. But she never did Broadway again,” the outlet explained.

She always wanted to tell her story

Several autobiographies of Barbra’s have been published, although never authorized by the actress. Many of these works, including Shaun Considine’s controversial 1985 release, Barbra Streisand: The Woman, the Myth, the Music, was said to have made the movie star “livid.”

Barbra first announced the plan for a biography in 2015, telling the Associated Press that she began writing her thoughts and contemplated “reliving” her life since 2009. She also revealed on The Tonight Show in 2021 that the late First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, who was an editor at Doubleday, had encouraged her to write a memoir in the early ’80s.

She has finally brought her long-promised body of work to life and is set to share it with the world on November 7. “Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment,” Penguin Random House wrote about the 1,040-page book on their website.