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Barbra Streisand was honored with a Life Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday. The 30th annual ceremony was broadcast live worldwide on Netflix for the first time.
The legendary actress, director, producer and singer is one of the few people to have achieved EGOT status – meaning she has won an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar, as well as a Tony Award. For the record, she has won two Oscars, ten Grammys, five Emmys and a Tony.
Jennifer Aniston and surprise host Bradley Cooper, who remade “A Star Is Born” in 2018 (Streisand starred in the 1976 version), presented Streisand with her trophy. After a montage showcasing her career spanning more than six decades, she gave an inspiring speech that earned her a standing ovation.
“I remember dreaming of being an actress as a teenager, sitting in my bed in Brooklyn with a pint of ice cream coffee,” she said. She had an epiphany on “Guys and Dolls.” “Everything was so beautiful on that screen.” Her first crush was the film's star, Marlon Brando. “I wanted to be the one he fell in love with. This illusory world was much more pleasant than anything I experienced. I didn’t like the reality.”
Streisand said that even though she didn't look like the other women she saw on screen, she fortunately didn't listen and her mother told her to learn to type instead. She thanked, among others, director William Wyler and cinematographer Harry Stradling from her first film “Funny Girl,” who asked her for her opinion and accepted it. “They never belittled me… And it set the tone for my entire career.”
She added: “It is truly a privilege to be part of this profession. For a few hours, people can sit in a theater and escape their own worries. What an idea, moving images on a screen. And I can't help but think about the people who built this industry. Ironically, they were also able to escape their own problems.”
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She named many of the men who founded the film industry early on and who escaped the prejudices in Western Europe because of their religion. “They were dreamers like all of us tonight. And now I dream of a world where such prejudices are a thing of the past,” she said.
“Barbra Streisand is an icon and an unparalleled talent, a force of nature who has seamlessly woven her brilliance into the fabric of our industry,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement. “From her early days captivating audiences on Broadway to her unforgettable roles in cinema classics such as 'Funny Girl', 'The Way We Were' and 'A Star Is Born,' Barbra's ability to portray her characters with authenticity is embody, almost extraordinary. ”