EXCLUSIVE: 'I groveled at his f**king feet but he still didn't like me.' How 'Big Beak' Barbra Streisand was bullied by her stepdad and shunned for being too Jewish only to later have affairs with the sexiest men in Hollywood - and beyond

Brooklyn born Barbra Streisand, now 73, was dismissed, insulted and reviled for acting and looking too Jewish when she first began her show business career.

As a young girl, she was tormented for her Semitic looks, called 'Big Beak and was told she had absolutely no hope of succeeding unless she had a nose job.

She endured the double whammy of being Jewish and being from Brooklyn, the New York borough she viewed as 'baseball, boredom and bad breath' and she knew she had to escape.

'I always knew I hadda be famous and rich – the best. Beautiful I'm not and never will be,' Barbra Streisand, 73, is quoted in new biography

She craved attention and success and made herself uglier than she was with purple lipstick, blue eye shadow and platinum blond hair. She also refused to get a nose job saying she was afraid of the pain.

Streisand succeeded in turning her social burden into her triumph against all odds with her secret weapon - her voice, described as 'one of the natural wonders of the age.'

Rejected by boys throughout her youth, she found enduring love with handsome actor James Brolin, 75, when they first met in 1996 and married two years later.

The skinny girl with crossed eyes, a severe case of acne that heavy makeup couldn't cover up and that big honking nose, had come a long way from a tragically unhappy childhood in Brooklyn only to arrive at being a cultural icon.

All that posing in the bathroom mirror at night wearing false eyelashes, dragging on a cigarette and imagining herself as a star paid off.

'I hadda be great'.

'I always knew I hadda be famous and rich – the best. Beautiful I'm not and never will be', Streisand is quoted in Neal Gabler's fascinating new book, Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity and Power published by Yale University Press.

Streisand was born in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn on April 24, 1942, months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that marked America's entrance into World War II.

Of the three million people in Brooklyn – Irish, Italian, Poles, and African Americans, one third were Jews.

New book reveals as a young girl, Streisand was tormented for her Semitic looks, called 'Big Beak' and was told she had absolutely no hope of succeeding unless she had a nose job

'Brooklyn was a dialect, streetwise and blunt; an attitude, bold and even arrogant'. A lower middle-class environment.

'Brooklynites knew they were condescended to – the sad sacks of life', writes the author, famed film critic and historian Neal Gabler.

Barbra's father, Emanuel Streisand, a child of Jewish immigrants, grew up in the now-uber trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, wrapping fish at his father's fish market there and on the Lower East Side. But he wasn't a fishmonger. 

He won a partial scholarship at City College and taught elementary school to underwrite a master's degree in education at City College that he received in 1930. He went on to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key at Columbia Teacher's College.

In 1930, he married Diana Rosen, also a child of Jewish immigrants.

Manny Streisand was a dream father, the father of one Jewish girl's dreams.

'When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food,' said Streisand (Diana Kind at the Hotel Pierre)

There are various stories on what actually happened to Manny but while working at a summer camp in the Catskills in August 1943, he fell and hit his head after taking campers on a hike.

An hour later, he couldn't be roused and was taken to a nearby hospital. He died that afternoon. He was thirty-five years old and Barbra was fifteen months.

The little girl used to stand looking out the window and watch for her father to come home every day.

For years, Barbra assumed that her father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and that she would inherit the same condition and her own life would be cut short.

She eventually learned he died from an error in hospital treatment after suffering a seizure and was possibly given an overdose of morphine.

But his absence from her life created a stark emptiness from a longing for her father 'in her bones'.

'I know if I had a father, I would probably be happily married and have two or three children'.

She certainly wasn't like her mother and attributed her own intellectual curiosity to her father.

Diana Rosen fell into a deep depression and mourning, crying endlessly when Manny died.

Diana, Barbra and her brother, Sheldon, went to live with her maternal grandparents in a cramped, three-room apartment.

The two children had to crawl under a table to avoid being beaten by their grandfather. Barbra's only doll was a hot water bottle.

Barbra escaped afternoons to the apartment upstairs where the mother of a friend let her watch old Laurel and Hardy movies on their new seven-inch television set.

In the summer, Barbra was sent to a Hebrew health camp in upstate New York that she detested but life grew even worse when her mother showed up with Louis Kind.

Kind was a ne'er do well, a gambler with three children and in the process of getting a divorce.

While working on a Broadway show Streisand met actor Elliott Gould in 1962 and married a year later. 'She scared me but I really dug her,' Gould said. 'I think I was the first person who ever did'

Gould and Streisand have one son together, Jason. But they divorced in 1971 as Gould's career couldn't keep pace with hers. He later stated she didn't know how to love

Diana got pregnant before Kind exited his marriage and Diana's humiliated parents ordered her daughter out of the house. The couple moved into an apartment in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Their new baby, Rosalind, was born seventeen days after their wedding.

Rosalind was yet one more curse in Streisand's life.

Kind was not going to be the father Barbra longed for and verbally abused her calling her 'the beast' and his beloved Rosalind, 'beauty'. He told her 'You're not pretty enough' when she asked for money for ice cream.

'I groveled at his f**king feet and called him Dad and brought him his slippers for two days. There was no change. He didn't treat me any better. He didn't talk to me. He didn't see me. He didn't like me', Barbra said.

Diana wasn't a better parent herself.

'She was, in her daughter's account at least, self-absorbed, cold and implacable – a maternal brute.

'Subconsciously I was always trying to please my mother.

'When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food.'

Streisand attributed her mother's coldness to her thwarted ambitions to be a singer. Diana had wanted to be a singer, to be famous but she never got out of Brooklyn.

Barbra's life wasn't just miserable at home. She was taunted by classmates for her 'Big Beak' and was a self-described 'real ugly kid' who was painfully thin and slightly cross-eyed.

Her severe acne couldn't be covered up with heavy makeup.

She was never asked out for a date for New Year's Eve or to a prom but it only inspired her to be outrageous and she dated a black boy in the 1950s.

She didn't care about the hostility showered upon her. It fueled her desire to get attention and she wanted it in acting.

Her voice got attention when she sang on the stoop of the apartment building or in apartment hallways.

Neither her mother nor her teachers could discourage her.

Streisand and long-time lover Jon Peters in 1975. He started out being her hairdresser who turned her into a  sexpot - she then made  him her co-producer. Peters said 'she's almost like a man' and that's one of the things that attracted her to him

After Streisands marriage to Elliott Gould collapsed in 1969, she went on to have several affairs including one with 'Me and Bobby McGee' singer Kris Kristofferson

Tennis star Andre Agassi and Streisand at the US Open in 1992. He compared dating her to 'wearing Hot Lava'

Streisand and actor Don Johnson, with whom she also had an affair, in 1988 at the premiere of Sweet Hearts Dance in Los Angeles

When she auditioned for the Choral Club at Erasmus Hall High School, she was rejected – but she kept singing.

'I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I would have made it any other way.'

Acting classes in Greenwich Village fed her ambitions but again she faced burning comments about her looks.

One theatre company owner said, 'She's very talented, but God, she's so ugly. What are we going to do with her?'

She worked hard but was described as being voracious, wary, distrustful and self-interested.

'She didn't have time for civility and never expressed gratitude even when someone cast her in a play.

'I used to sit at the table with my feet up. I didn't know you were supposed to put a napkin in your lap. My mother ate from a pot standing up at the kitchen stove', Barbra remembered.

At seventeen, she was trying to educate herself and was taking classes, auditioning and reading Russian plays, Russian novels, Greek tragedies.

With the help of actor Barry Dennen and his illustrator friend, both Jewish and gay, she learned how to dress, use makeup and proper manners. 

She never acknowledged Dennen's help and Dennen stated that she had a habit of 'cutting out of her life people who were not directly relevant to her success.'

Her first manager, Ted Rozar, reiterated the charge. 'If you were of no value to her, that little switch went off in her head and she treated you like s**t.'

She played downtown gay clubs in Manhattan and the gays understood what it was like to be different. They adored her. She was with Dennen when she decided to change her name from Barbara to Barbra. Just to be different.

She worked upstate theatres in the summer and returned to New York to sing about being the forlorn girl – 'the girl the guys never looked at her twice, the invisible woman.'

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau smiled as he escorted Streisand to a United Jewish Appeal dinner in October 1983 honoring Streisand for her contributions to the Jewish community. The two had an affair

Streisand was so serious about Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau - she even thought about marrying him and becoming Canada's First Lady

'It is difficult to say whether Streisand would have succeeded had she not started out in New York, had she not had such a large gay following, and had she not drawn support from the Jewish and ethnic communities of the city', writes Gabler.

An early shtick of hers was to take her gum out and stick it on the microphone before she started her first song.

She worked in front of a mirror four to five hours a day using her hands moving them through the air - adding drama to her performance.

When Barbra got her first record contract with Columbia Records, she was deeply resented as being outside the mainstream. 

Columbia 'producers had always promoted pretty blond gentile girls with perky noses' – and then came Barbra.

But she made it there with the help of a Jewish entertainment mafia and the album, The Barbra Streisand Album, now a classic, made in late January 1963.

Columbia executives said that she and Bob Dylan, also Jewish, were the 'two the fags and radicals brought in'.

That album was the turning point in her career 'when she went from being a New York phenomenon to a performer with a national reputation'.

Now she was a recording artist.

'When I'm good, when I'm pleased with my performance, I feel powerful. I forget about being an ugly duckling'.

Streisand met actor James Brolin in 1996 while dining with friends at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. Brolin has said: 'After ten minutes I was a goner, and after two hours, I knew we'd get married some day.' They married two years later

'Streisand has changed the bland, pugnosed American ideal, probably forever', Gloria Steinem stated.

When she auditioned for the leading role in the Broadway show, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Producer David Merrick said she was too ugly. 

But she got the Miss Marmelstein role because she could sing and she became a Broadway star playing an outsized Jewish mieskeit [ugly person] in 1962.

It was here she met actor Elliott Gould when he was twenty-three, four years her senior.

'She scared me but I really dug her,' Gould said. 'I think I was the first person who ever did'.

They wed the following year just when Streisand became the top-selling female vocalist in the US with her first album.

His career couldn't keep pace with hers and they divorced in 1971 after a two-year trial separation. They had one child together, Jason.

Gould loved her unreservedly and thought he seemed desperate.

'One side of Barbra needed men. The other was disdainful of men and competitive toward them', Gould said.

He later stated she didn't know how to love.

After the marriage collapsed in 1969, Barbra went on to have affairs with Ryan O'Neal, Warren Beatty, Don Johnson, Kris Kristofferson, Sydney Chapin, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and even thought about marrying him and becoming Canada's First Lady.

Biography reveals Streisand and Brolin would go for long drives through San Bernardino County and eat sandwiches that Barbra made while visiting truck stops and touring America

Actor Omar Sharif fell in love with her and then felt emasculated by her.

Now-retired, tennis star Andre Agassi shared a hatred for the thing they did so well – his tennis, her singing. He compared dating her to 'wearing Hot Lava'.

Her long time lover, Jon Peters who started out being her hairdresser and then became her co-producer, said 'she's almost like a man' and that's one of the things that attracted her to him.

'Peters was the wild teenage boyfriend that Streisand never had.'

He was the antithesis of a nice Jewish boy. He was a juvenile delinquent and left school after the seventh grade and moved to New York to work in a hair salon so he could be around beautiful women. He moved back to Encino and opened his own salon.

He was rough and incorrigible, vulgar but charismatic. Theirs was a hot romance and he treated her like a hot sexy girlfriend. 

'He would grab her like a woman. He never gave her that movie-star treatment, "Oh, Barbra, you're the greatest".' He made her into a sexpot and she made him co-producer.

Beyond her voice was her ear that she viewed as 'a secret hidden inside me, inside my head'.

She had tinnitus, a condition that causes a buzzing or ringing in the ear.

When she was younger, she wrapped scarves around her head to suppress the sound that only she could hear but it depressed her.

Her mother, Diana, gave her a hot water bottle to sleep on.

Streisand learned to view it as a 'gift' because it made her acutely aware of sound, every note, every instrument.

With her Broadway and recording successes, she spent the 1970s and '80s as a housewife taking a break from the stage.

She just wanted to live like a real woman.

Her life unexpectedly changed when dining with friends at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills in 1996 and met actor James Brolin, now 75.

They sat down and started talking. 'After ten minutes I was a goner, and after two hours, I knew we'd get married some day', Brolin said.

Barbra had been in therapy to help her become more self-aware and learn to acknowledge other's realities.

Brolin had his issues of learning to emote and had been enrolled in a love and communication seminar where he learned to hug.

Streisand was his third marriage when they married on July 1, 1998.

They'd go for long drives through San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles. They'd eat sandwiches that Barbra had made, visit truck stops – on a tour of the Gentile America that Barbra had never seen.

Barbra spent her life trying to satisfy her mother, Diana Kind but Diana never came to terms with her daughter's success. Kind died in 2002 at age 93.

This success wouldn't have been possible without her Jewish roots, Gabler writes.

She would have had no sense of otherness, no hostility to her looks, no harping on her loudness and bossiness, her lack of femininity.

Streisand learned how to triumph over her doubts, her fears, complexities and the worst of criticism.

She not only survived, she triumphed.

Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power by Neal Gabler, published by Yale University Press is available on Amazon April 26