Barbra Streisand developed stage fright after Sydney Chaplin began “jeering” her after she ended their “flirtation”.
The 81-year-old actress grew “physically sick” in the wake of the repeated insults she allegedly received from her ‘Funny Girl’ co-star and though she fulfilled her commitment to opening the show in London, the production marked the last time she’d ever appear on New York’s Broadway.
In a profile for Vanity Fair magazine, the outlet revealed her new memoir ‘My Name is Barbra’ shares the “origin story” of her stage fright.
They wrote: “She was doing ‘Funny Girl’ on Broadway opposite Sydney Chaplin (Charlie’s son), and they had what she refers to as a ‘flirtation’, but she felt guilty (she was married to Elliott Gould at the time) and put a stop to it. Chaplin was angry.
“Onstage, every night, he began cursing and jeering at her, so quietly that no one but Streisand could hear him.
“Her co-star had become her nemesis. It made her physically sick and threw her concentration.
“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.”
As well as playing Fanny Brice in the stage show, Barbra also played her in the movie version of ‘Funny Girl’ and revealed she did her own make-up because she wasn’t happy with the professional results.
Vanity Fair wrote: “We’ve been talking about make-up. For most of her career—from her nightclub gigs when she was 18 right through to her major films—Barbra Streisand did her own.
“At first because there was no one else to do it, and then because no one could do it better.
“In her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, out November 7, she tells the story of her film test for ‘Funny Girl’. The make-up people came to attend to her, and she thought, ‘Great, they’re the experts. Let’s see what they can do.’ But she didn’t love the result. ‘I said, “Thank you very much” ‘ Streisand writes, ‘but then I asked, “Would it be all right if we also did a test with just me making myself up?” The studio said, “Fine.” ‘
“The cinematographer picked Streisand’s.”
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