Barbra Streisand Addresses 'The Streisand Effect,' the Origin Story of Her Stage Fright, Cloning Dogs & Lea Michele Doing 'Funny Girl'

On being offered to write a memoir in 1984 by Jackie Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, which began the memoir journey:

“’Frankly, I thought at 42 I was too young, with much more work still to come.’ (She wasn’t wrong, but for those keeping score, she had already won an honorary Tony, two Oscars, one Emmy, and seven Grammys.) Still, she started making notes, and in 1999 began keeping a journal, longhand. ‘I never learned to type,’ she says, an act of defiance against her mother, who wanted her to pursue a career in school administration so that she’d have summers off. Instead, Streisand grew out her nails, precluding secretarial work, and—just to put a point on it—became a supernova.”

On her reviews, good and bad:

“’I’m not completely sure that what I do is so great.’ It’s not that the negative reviews don’t sting; they do. It’s more that ultimately, she is her own harshest critic.”