By James B. Stewart
Photographs by Collier Schorr
Styled by Mel Ottenberg
“I spent three months working on that speech,” she says, yet she hadn’t realized that she would be speaking in front of so many cameras and news outlets. “My heart was in my throat.” Her near-paralysis there echoed an incident from 1967 when, overcome by stage fright, she forgot her lyrics during a concert in Central Park in front of an estimated 135,000 people. Other than for political or charitable events, she didn’t sing live at a major concert for 27 years. “What if I forgot the lyrics again?” she asks. Nearly everyone suffers to some degree from performance anxiety, but psychologists say it can become acute when a fear of being judged merges with deep-seated insecurity. Even after all these years, Streisand recalls that the Times columnist Maureen Dowd was in the audience at her Harvard speech, and the prospect of a bad review terrified her.
“I still think I’m like most creative people are — confident at times and insecure at times,” she says. “I don’t know if that ever goes away.” Today, after years of therapy when she was younger, she’s “much more grounded.” She still doesn’t know the source of her early brashness. “I think I had more of that when I was young,” she says. Streisand has repeatedly portrayed strong, successful women onscreen, but “she isn’t afraid to make herself vulnerable,” says Kosarin. “That makes her so approachable. There’s an alchemy there that makes her a star.”
LIKE MANY ASPECTS of her personality, she traces that undertow of vulnerability to not having known her father, a subject she returns to several times in our conversations this fall. His absence haunts her still. Last May, Streisand, like the rest of the world, watched George Floyd being killed by the Minneapolis police. She was struck by the horror of Floyd’s death, but she was struck as well by his 6-year-old daughter, Gianna, now left fatherless. To lose a father — “I know how that feels,” Streisand says. So, in June, Streisand sent Gianna some shares of Disney stock, along with a letter, written from the perspective of a young girl whose father has died.
“I think our dads watch over us forever,” Streisand wrote. “When you get older and have a decision to make … just close your eyes and ask him for help. And if you listen very carefully, he will lead you to the right choice. I promise!
Love,
Barbra.”
Production: Connect the Dots. Hair: Soonie Paik. Makeup: Amber Dreadon. Tailor: Vita Gavrylyuk. Digital tech: Michael Preman. Photo assistants: Max Dworkin, Hunter Zieske and Joseph Mitchell. Stylist’s assistants: Ansley Burnette and Emma Larsen
