WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
For a long time I wasn’t aware if Barbra was a singer or an actress first. In a way, if you look past ‘on-screen’, she was technically both at the same time. She recorded her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, in 1963 – well at the same time she was on stage on Broadway from 1961-1963 playing Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get it for You Wholesale. Well, let’s move to her on-screen acting career….
Owl and the Pussycat
This is possibly the most annoying character I have ever seen in a film. I’m sorry Barbra but I completely understand where Felix/Fred is coming from and why he finds her so annoying. I’ll be honest, I didn’t quite understand the film in the beginning – it just came across as two people that were continuously arguing with each other – but as the film goes on and their relationship develops you can actually see them realising how much they truly care about each other. However, I feel unbelievably sorry for Barbra’s character of Doris at the end because Fred turns into what seems like a mean person as he pushes her to the floor in the middle of the park and treats her like some sort of animal.
The Way We Were
Yes, Barbra sings the title song but that doesn’t count. Her character doesn’t sing and that’s what’s important here. I’m not sure if the curly brown hair, when we go back to Katie and Hubble’s college days, was supposed to make her look unattractive but if it was I think they failed. I’ll be honest, and I’m possibly being a little bit harsh on Robert Redford’s character of Hubble here, but it comes across as such a one-sided relationship. It’s clear from the moment she sees him in the bar for the first time in years that she loves him but to me it’s like he is in love with the fact that she loves him instead of actually being in love with Katie.
Little Fockers
Don’t get me wrong, I love Barbra Streisand. So much so that I wish I had been able to get hold of Meet the Fockers because at least I would have had more to talk about but here we are. She has around 4 scenes – including the closing one – but they all feel very much like they are there to move the plot along. If it wasn’t for her scene saying that Gaylord has intimacy issues, Jack wouldn’t have been so suspicious that he was having an affair, meaning that he would never follow him and the fight at the end would never happen. Her role of Roz Focker in this is so small, it’s harder to comment on it than her roles in the other films mentioned.
Honorary Mentions
I’ll be honest, I thought Barbra had a lot more acting credits than she did. It explains why I struggled so much with this article as a lot of those are singing roles – like Yentl and Funny Girl for example. It also seems that she has decided to turn away from acting as her last film role was in 2012 with The Guilt Trip.
