“Acting is not enough, really. What interested me was filmmaking. The craft of filmmaking and lenses, composition, colors, photography, lighting, decorating the sets, costumes, dealing with actors, and trying to bring a moment of truth to the screen. That’s what interests me.”
That was the dream of then 34-year-old Barbra Streisand when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association interviewed her at a press conference in 1976: to be a filmmaker. She would, of course, eventually fulfill this goal.

During that time, though, the actress-singer had just finished, opposite costar Kris Kristofferson, one of her most personal projects and one of the year’s biggest hits, A Star Is Born, director Frank Pierson’s remake of the original 1937 film.
Budgeted at $6 million and co-produced by Streisand and her then partner Jon Peters, the movie would gross $80 million in North America and, at the 1977 Golden Globes, go on to win her two awards (out of five overall victories): Best Actress – Musical or Comedy, and Best Original Song, for “Evergreen.”

Streisand explained her interest in the remake as stemming from its romance and complicated portrayal of artistic ambition. “Really, the story is not so much about my success and his downfall,” she said, “so much as one’s inner soul, an inner belief in oneself, and that if you don’t have yourself and if you only rely on your audience to tell you whether you’re successful or not, then you have to die. You have nothing once they leave you.”
Another thing that interested her about tackling A Star Is Born was its examination of the evolving nature of gender roles. “This woman, as you notice, doesn’t give up her career for her husband,” Streisand said. “She is not a passive person.”
Born Barbara Joan Streisand (she’d later change the spelling to Barbra), to a singer-turned-school secretary mom and a high school teacher dad in Brooklyn, Streisand always dreamed of becoming an actress.
William Wyler’s Funny Girl launched Streisand into international stardom. After a pair of screen musicals (Hello, Dolly! and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), she did comedies (The Owl and the Pussycat, What’s Up, Doc?) and then dramas (Up the Sandbox, The Way We Were).

Streisand’s filmmaking ambitions eventually came to fruition with the musical drama Yentl (1983), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, becoming the first (and, for 37 years, only) woman to win the prize. The movie also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
For this multi-awarded filmmaker-actress-singer, who became the only artist to achieve a number-one album on Billboard charts from the 1960s to the ’90s and then again in the 21st century, life is a continuous journey of learning. “I’m a perpetual student. I love to learn. I love education,” she said in a 1991 HFPA press conference.
That innate inquisitiveness reflects just the way La Streisand was, is, and will be.