Barbra Streisand Reflects on Meeting "Wonderful" Princess Diana
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Barbra Streisand's long-awaited memoir, My Name Is Barbra, is finally here.
While we'll definitely be unpacking the 966 pages for the weeks (and months) to come, one passage in particular caught our attention: when Streisand recalls meeting Princess Diana at the February 1992 premiere of The Prince of Tides.
My Name Is Barbra
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She writes about flying to London for the London premiere of The Prince of Tides, "a benefit for Princess Diana's charity, the AIDS Crisis Trust. I was impressed with the way Diana visited hospitals and held the hands of AIDS patients. Her kind, open attitude did a lot to destigmatize the disease. And she was lovely to look at... tall, pretty, with a great figure. I liked her cropped hair, her blue eyes, and her longish nose. She was warm and friendly, and it was fun to sit next to her in the balcony of the theater at Leicester Square, watching the film."
After the movie ended, Streisand recounts, people started to applaud. "I was told that the princess has to stand up first...that was royal protocol...but instead Diana was smiling and clapping along with everyone else and she whispered to me, 'You must stand up.' I said, 'Really? You're supposed to stand up first. Are you sure it's all right?' She said, 'Absolutely!' and gave me a little push."
What comes next is just an incredible memory: "The zipper on my skirt had come down a bit as I was sitting, and she noticed and quickly started to zip it up for me as I got to my feet."
Imagine: Princess Diana zipping up your skirt for you.
"When I finally sat down," Streisand recounts, "Diana turned to me and asked, 'Do you know how wonderful you are?' I looked at her, and another moment from my life flashed before my eyes. Those were the same words that Marilyn Bergman had said to me at the Bon Soir, thirty years earlier. I certainly didn't know it then. Did I know it now? I'm not sure... maybe a little. I thought Diana was wonderful. I wonder if she knew how wonderful she was."
This isn't Streisand's first time speaking about the royals; in 2021, she spoke about her friendship with then-Prince Charles, having befriended him before he ever met Diana. "I loved spending some time at Highgrove for a weekend fundraiser and going through his gardens," she said, joking, "if I played my cards right, I could have wound up being the first Jewish princess!"
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