Barbra Streisand Gives Moving Speech at SAG Awards, Recalls Dream of Becoming an Actress: “I Didn’t Like Reality”

As a teenager, Barbra Streisand dreamt of being an actress while sitting on her bed in Brooklyn with a pint of coffee ice cream and a movie magazine. During those days, after school she would make a break for New York’s Astor Theatre, which showed black-and-white international movies. Another time, she ducked into a showing of Guys and Dolls at the Loew’s Kings Theatre in her neighborhood.

“Everything was so beautiful up on that screen,” Streisand said in opening her acceptance speech upon receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award during Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles. “That make-believe world was much more pleasant than anything I was experiencing. I didn’t like reality. I wanted to be in the movies, even though I knew I didn’t look like the other women on the screen. My mother said, ‘you better learn to type,’ but I didn’t listen. Somehow, some way, thank you God, it all came true.”

That’s a bit of an understatement. Streisand has gone on to become a Hollywood legend with a diversified career and decades of contributions to the culture through singing, acting, writing, producing, directing and building a foundation that supports a variety of causes from politics and the environment to women’s health and gun control. Streisand credited “two brilliant men” on her first film, 1968’s Funny Girl, the director William Wyler, and his cinematographer, Harry Stradling Sr., for having no issues with a young woman who had opinions. “I could suggest ideas for a scene to Willie and to try various lighting effects with Harry, and they never ever put me down. Looking back, they were really ahead of their time, and that was fantastic,” Streisand continued. “And it set the tone for my whole career actually.”

For a legend like Streisand, one presenter was not enough, so she was feted by two with Jennifer Aniston and Bradley Cooper. Following their remarks, the 81-year-old walked to center stage to an emotional and lengthy standing ovation inside L.A’s Shrine Auditorium, which hosted the ceremony that streamed live on Netflix. Cameras panned to multiple actors, including Anne Hathaway and Hannah Waddingham, who had tears in their eyes.

“It’s really a privilege to be part of this profession,” Streisand continued. “For a couple of hours, people can sit in a theater and escape their own troubles. What an idea — moving pictures on a screen.”

Streisand then said that she “can’t help but think back” to those who built the industry, men like Szmuel Gelbfisz, who became Samuel Goldwyn; Lazar Meir, who became Louis B. Mayer; and the four Eichelbaum brothers, who became Warner Bros. “They were all fleeing the prejudice they faced in Eastern Europe simply because of their religion,” she said, nodding to the current fraught times amid a rise in antisemitism. “They were dreamers too, like all of us here tonight. And now I dream of a world where such prejudice is a thing of the past.”

Recently, Streisand said, she and her husband, James Brolin (who attended Saturday’s ceremony), saw a “wonderful French film” with some friends. “It’s called Une Belle Course, which means ‘a beautiful ride,’” she said, referring to Christian Carion’s 2022 film starring Line Renaud, Dany Boon and Alice Isaaz. The film follows an elderly woman who hires a “grumpy taxi driver” to take her to a nursing home but along the way, they revisit special places in the woman’s past in Paris. “By the end of the film, all of us were in tears because it was so moving and insightful about how you can make a profound connection with someone simply by telling the truth. It reminded me all over again of how much I love film and why we all strive to make the best movies we can.”

Streisand then left the stage after hugs with Aniston and Cooper. Earlier in their remarks, the pair praised Streisand’s many talents and how she has been a groundbreaker at nearly every stage. “Barbra, that’s all you have to say,” Aniston said in opening her tribute. “And you know right away; that face, that voice, that talent. It is a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and how lucky that it is in our lifetime.”

Aniston called it “particularly poetic” that SAG-AFTRA honored Streisand at the Shrine Auditorium, the same theater where Streisand performed her first major concert in 1963 on this very stage right. “Music was always playing in my house growing up, and I remember so vividly the first time I heard that voice. I mean that voice, this feeling just washed over my entire body. My eyes just welled up with tears. From that moment on, I was madly in love with Barbra, and it was clear that her talent did not end there,” Aniston said. Then she found out Streisand could act as well after seeing her debut in Funny Girl. “Who could watch her in the role of Fanny Brice and not be memorized by that performance?”

Aniston credited Streisand for becoming the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major studio film in Yentl. “Barbra did not just pave the way for us women. She bulldozed a clearing for us. Magnificent talent aside, Barbra created the Streisand Foundation, giving tens of millions of dollars in grants to more than 800 organizations supporting women’s health, civil rights, environmental issues and gun control,” continued Aniston, who said that while she’s never had the pleasure of working with Streisand, she has spent cherished time with her over the years. One of those moments included getting to kiss her at midnight one New Year’s Eve. “Telling the truth,” Aniston said. “Barbra, I love you.”

Aniston then welcomed Bradley Cooper to the stage. The actor and filmmaker — who remade the Streisand starrer A Star Is Born — praised Streisand for not compromising her creative vision. “For example, Barbra never liked the ending of the 1973 film The Way We Were. She knew that there were scenes that she and Robert Redford had shot that weren’t used, that would’ve made the film better, but it had been 50 years,” Cooper detailed. “Barbra decided to let bygones be bygones? No. She lobbied the studio to recut the ending of the film to add those extra scenes, and just last year released it along with the re-release of the original.”

To that, he said, “Barbra, you stop at nothing and your pursuit of realizing your brilliant visions. We are so pleased to be here tonight to see you honored for your remarkable and truly unprecedented career.”