Kennedy Center Honors: Barbra Streisand

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The Kennedy Center Honors: Barbra Streisand

A look at the career of the celebrated singer, actress and director, a recipient of the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors.

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"Her talent is her voice and her unbelievable taste level," he adds. "Let's assume you were working for NASA and they're going to be putting a man on the moon. Everyone has to do a perfect job. What she is, is the vessel that can get you to the moon."

Tom Santopietro, whose 2006 book, "The Importance of Being Barbra," assesses Streisand's career highs (e.g., "The Broadway Album," 1985) as well as lows (the movie "For Pete's Sake," 1974), says our fascination with her has to do with that rapidly churning metabolism, that aspect of her drive that believes "the public deserved her best."

"The Barbra Streisand engine is: What's next?" says Santopietro, a longtime Broadway theater manager. "This incessant 'what's next,' it's always what's just over the horizon. That fuels the artistry."

A lack of belief in herself has never been an obstacle.

"Actor-singer-director-composer-producer-designer-activist" is how she is somewhat grandly introduced in her own handout biography. And now, all these hyphens are to be linked and acknowledged in a single evening, as she adds to her trophy shelves her Kennedy Center Honors medal.

"People say: 'You're getting the Kennedy honor? I thought you got this like 10 years ago,' " she says. It's true: The award is overdue. Politically, though, the timing is odd. When it's pointed out that she's accepting the award in the presence of President Bush, Streisand -- a liberal Democrat so high-octane that she asserts on her Web site that the past two presidential elections were "stolen" by the Republicans -- shifts a bit uncomfortably on her sofa.

"I would have loved to be there during Bill Clinton, of course," she says of the president she was closest to; she endorsed Hillary Clinton this year, before shifting to Barack Obama, after he became a numerical certainty for the nomination. Given the results of Nov. 4, Washington no longer has to feel like hostile territory. During a concert before a recent election -- she's a reliable singer for Democrats' suppers -- she tried to conjure a Democratic victory with a rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again."

Now, for her, they finally are. "Such an incredible step forward for our country, against racism -- the good guy won," she says.

So she'll willingly shake hands this weekend with Bush, be feted at the traditional State Department dinner by Condoleezza Rice -- the whole GOP-heavy shmear?

She grins. "Barack took the high road in this election," she says, "and I'm going to have to take it, too."

Streisand is a sharp-witted if less exuberant version of the passionate, iron-willed characters she created in her two most memorable movies, "Funny Girl" and "The Way We Were." (They aren't her only strong films: "Nuts," the play-based movie in which she's an angry prostitute accused of murder, and "What's Up, Doc?," in which she portrays a nutty perpetual student, show off her range, for drama as well as screwball comedy.) Wearing her hair in a sleek variation of that classic Streisand bob, she's a youthful 66. Svelter, too, than she looked in her turn as Ben Stiller's earthy Jewish mom in the 2004 "Fockers," the only movie she's been in since 1996's "The Mirror Has Two Faces."

Although she's allergic to celebrity duties, such as sitting for interviews -- "I never liked anything for publicity" -- she's forthcoming and down-to-earth. Despite a legendary reputation for wanting to dictate terms, especially on movie sets, she seems on this autumn late afternoon a model of compliance; after her assistants order her back into a chair for more photographs, she groans but obediently returns to the seat.