Barbra Streisand is recalling one of the wildest sliding doors moments of her life.
In a sprawling interview last week about her upcoming memoir “My Name is Barbra,” the iconic singer said she was once propositioned by none other than Marlon Brando at a party in 1966 — while his third wife, actor Tarita Teriipaia, was in the next room.
In a chapter titled “Brando” obtained by Vanity Fair, Streisand, now 81, recalled Brando bluntly telling her: “I’d like to fuck you.” The “Star is Born” actor says she turned him down ― which ultimately spurred a lifelong friendship between the two.
Streisand said this began with routine phone calls. Brando even rang her after seeing her in “Funny Girl” (1968) ― the William Wyler adaptation of Isobel Lennart’s book and subsequent Broadway musical — to provide Streisand with an amusing note.
“You were really good,” he told Streisand, “but you run funny.”
Brando had already established himself as the foremost actor of his generation at that point, having won an Oscar for Best Actor for “On the Waterfront” (1954). His 1966 proposition wasn’t the last time he tried to bed Streisand.
“He wanted to take me to the desert, to see the wildflowers,” Streisand told Piers Morgan in 2012. “And sleep over in a ghost town, he said. But I was such a ‘nice Jewish girl’ that I just said, ‘Marlon, I can’t stay overnight with you. I’ll go with you for the day, but you have to take me home.’”
Left: Evan Agostini/File/Associated Press; Right: Michel Dufour/Getty Images
When praised for her racy and honest writing, Streisand told Vanity Fair: “Well, he’s Marlon Brando!”
The memoir itself has been a long time coming ― she was urged to write one as early as 1984, by none other than former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
“We had tea, and she was just so lovely,” Streisand told Jimmy Fallon in 2021.
By 1984, Streisand had already been awarded seven Grammys, two Oscars, one Emmy and an honorary Tony. But she told Vanity Fair that she “thought at 42 I was too young” to thoroughly chronicle her life, and she confidently believed there was “much work still to come.”
According to her publisher, the book not only covers Streisand’s youth in Brooklyn, New York, but her first date with longtime husband James Brolin and her experience of becoming the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major motion picture with “Yentl” (1983).
“My Name is Barbra” hits shelves Nov. 7.