Barbra Streisand Reveals the R-Rated Pickup Line She Used on James Brolin
<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://bestlifeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/11/james-barbra.jpg?quality=82&strip=1&resize=640%2C360" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“James Brolin and Barbra Streisand at the premiere of “Jonah Hex” in 2010 - 1”>
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How do a famous TV and movie star and an Oscar-winning singer and actor kick off their relationship? With an insulting pickup line, of course. In a new interview, Barbra Streisand reminisced about meeting husband James Brolin for the first time in 1996 and how she broke the ice. As she tells it, her pickup line included both a curse word and a disparaging comment about Brolin’s appearance. And it worked! The couple have now been married for 25 years.
RELATED: Barbra Streisand Says Marlon Brando Propositioned Her With His Wife in the Next Room .
Streisand recently opened up to CBS Sunday Morning about being set up with Brolin at a dinner party. “I walked by him, touched his hair, and said, ‘Who [expletive] up your hair?’ Because that was the truth,” she said. “What else was I gonna say? Hello, my name is Barbra. I mean, what?”
Host Gayle King asked Brolin what he thought of Streisand’s introduction. “Some people could’ve been turned off by that kind of directness. You were not. That was attractive to you, right?” King said. The Traffic star replied, “Very. It was instant. It was like a wand went, Bing. Uh, oh, you’re screwed .”
So, what was wrong with Brolin’s hair, anyway? According to a 2022 interview with The Guardian , the Westworld actor had shaved his head , because he’d recently decided to grow out his natural gray rather than continue to dye it.
Prior to the dinner, a mutual friend had asked the actor’s manager if he would be interested in a date with Streisand. “I’d seen her twice before, at a luncheon and at the Oscars, and went: ‘Whoa!’ She was different from what I expected, because we all have preconceptions about people. So I said: ‘Yes, absolutely interested,’” Brolin recalled.
Then, that friend invited Brolin and Streisand to a dinner party where she delivered her memorable line. “Who [expletive] up your hair?” Brolin remembered his now-wife saying. “And that was it—I fell in love.”
Streisand previously said that she had expected Brolin to look different in person. During a 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show , the Yentl star said, “I expected a guy with a brown beard and brown, wavy hair, like a mountain man. And I saw a guy that had all his hair cut off, no beard.” So, she decided to point it out. She also said that while Brolin knew right away that he wanted to be with her, it “took [her] a few hours… no, a few days.”
Streisand and Brolin went on to get married two years after they met, in 1998. Both actors had been married before. Brolin was married to Jane Cameron Agee from 1966 to 1984, and they welcomed two children. His second wife was Jan Smithers , to whom he was married from 1986 to 1995. They had one child together. As for Streisand, she was married to Elliott Gould from 1963 to 1971 and they had one child.
Streisand shared the secret to her and Brolin’s long-lasting marriage in an interview with Variety in 2021. “The secret is to listen carefully,” she said. “I think to be a good actor, you have to listen. To be a good person, you have to listen. To be a good marriage partner, you have to listen. Hear the other person. Agree to disagree.”
Barbra Streisand Says Marlon Brando Propositioned Her With His Wife in the Next Room
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If her upcoming memoir clocking in at 992 pages is any indication, Barbra Streisand has a lot of stories to tell. One particularly scandalous one involves late actor Marlon Brando , who became a friend of the star. According to Streisand’s book, Brando once propositioned her while his wife was in the very next room. The Oscar-winner turned him down, but it wasn’t the end of their relationship. It also wasn’t the last time that he hit on her.
Read on to find out more about Streisand and Brando’s relationship, which traces back to her crush on him before they ever met.
RELATED: Ali MacGraw “Knew” She’d Have Affair With Co-Star Steve McQueen: “I Was Obsessed.”
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Streisand was interviewed by Vanity Fair ahead of the Nov. 7 release of her memoir, My Name Is Barbra . The profile recaps a chapter of the book titled “Brando,” in which Streisand writes that the actor asked her to have sex with him while they were at a party in 1966. At the time, she would have been 24 while Brando was 42.
According to the book, Brando told Streisand, “I’d like to [expletive] you” while his wife was in an adjoining room. (The article does not state which wife was present, however. Brando had overlapping marriages with Movita Castaneda and Tarita Teriipaia , though the Castaneda marriage was later annulled.)
RELATED: Elizabeth Taylor’s Affair With This Actor Was So Scandalous, the Vatican Got Involved .
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According to her book, Streisand and Brando became friends and stayed that way until his death in 2004. The now-81-year-old also writes that after Brando saw the 1968 film adaptation of Funny Girl , he called her and said, “You were really good, but you run funny.” Vanity Fair ‘s Radhika Jones told Streisand that “Brando” is “one of the wilder chapters [she’s] ever encountered in literature.” The author responded, “Well, he’s Marlon Brando!”
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During a 2012 appearance on Piers Morgan Tonight , Streisand told another story about spending time with Brando. This one was about a road trip they took together in the ’70s.
“[Brando] wanted to take me to the desert, to see the wildflowers,” she said, adding that he said he wanted to “sleep over in a ghost town.”
Streisand said that she rejected his advances. “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.’” Again, she added that they remained friends and would talk on the phone “for hours and hours.”
Evidence of Streisand and Brando’s friendship was shared by John Travolta in on Instagram in 2020 . In a “flashback Friday” post, Travolta shared a photo of himself, his late wife Kelly Preston , Streisand, her husband James Brolin , Brando, and others. In the picture, Streisand sits on Brando’s lap. Travolta wrote in the caption, “A special party for Marlon Brando at Barbra Streisand’s house #FBF.” He did not specify what year the photo was taken.
Long before they ever met, Brando became Streisand’s celebrity crush after she saw him in 1955’s Guys and Dolls .
“Since I was 13, Marlon Brando was my favorite. I saw him in Guys and Dolls —and that was it,” she told W magazine in 2016. “Interestingly, there was a period of 27 years when I didn’t sing in public, because of stage fright, and when I finally did, I created a scenario in which I sang ‘I’ll Know’ with Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls . I put myself in his movie! I invited Brando to my house to see the piece, and he made me take him through my entire show. We then watched a movie together. It was wonderful: He was my idol, my biggest crush.”
“I’ll Know” is a song from the Guys and Dolls . When Streisand performed the song at Madison Square Garden for her 1994 live album The Concert , she spoke about Brando and the film before singing it.
“This friend of mine named Barbara Sankell , who knew that I wanted to be an actress told me about this actor named Marlon Brando, who was in a movie called Guys and Dolls , which I also didn’t know was from a Broadway play. And so I went to see it, and it was truly a life-altering experience seeing Marlon Brando for the first time. It was the only movie that I ever sat through twice—just to get to see him again and to have another Mello Roll. Anyway, I’ll never forget this song.”
