Barbra Streisand accepted her lifetime achievement honor at the 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday with what seemed like an acknowledgment of the current world situation. Noting that Hollywood was built by studio chiefs like Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer, men who fled antisemitism in Eastern Europe, she said, “Now I dream of a world where such prejudice is a thing of the past.”
But the actress, filmmaker and singer focused mostly on her love of film, fondly recalling going to the movies when she was growing up in Brooklyn and seeing Marlon Brando, her first crush, in “Guys and Dolls” at a theater near Erasmus Hall High School. “That make-believe world was much more pleasant than anything I experienced,” she said, explaining that she didn’t like reality. “I wanted to be in the movies.”
Later, as a working actress, she said, her first film, “Funny Girl” (1968), set the tone for her career, thanks to the director, William Wyler, and the cinematographer, Harry Stradling. “They had no problem with young women with opinions,” she added.
Elsewhere at the awards, Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) and Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”) won for supporting roles on the film side. For television, “The Bear” swept the comedy honor, taking best ensemble as well as best actor and actress for Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri. We’re updating the winners as they’re announced.
