Barbra Streisand to be honored in coming 'Cannes Film Festival'

Hollywood legend Barbra Streisand will award an Honorary Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, organisers announced Wednesday, honouring a career that has spanned more than six decades.

“It is with pride and deep humility that I am delighted to join the circle of Honorary Palme d’Or winners, whose work has inspired me for so long,” said the Broadway icon. She will receive the award at the festival’s closing ceremony in May.

Streisand will add the prize to a legendary collection that includes four Emmys, ten Grammys, two Oscars, and a Tony. She is one of only 22 people to have achieved the elite EGOT status, winning the top US prizes in television, music, cinema and theatre.

After her start as a breakout star in theatre on Broadway, Streisand evolved into a global icon across both the film and music industries.

She famously won the Best Actress Oscar for her first film role in 1968’s “Funny Girl” at just 26-years-old before taking home a second in 1977 for “Evergreen”, the original song from “A Star Is Born”, in which she also played the lead role.

Streisand later stepped behind the camera to write, direct, and produce the film “Yentl”, the story of a young woman who disguises herself as a man to study the Talmud.

The project, based on a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, took 14 years to bring to the screen, but got seven Oscar nominations in 1984.

Cannes festival noted, “It was the first time Hollywood had given such a large production budget to a female filmmaker”.

Streisand is also the only female artist to have had an album top the charts in each of the last six decades.

For Cannes director Thierry Fremaux, the prize recognises Streisand’s contribution as the “legendary synthesis between Broadway and Hollywood, between the music hall stage and the big screen”.

New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson, best known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will also be awarded an Honorary Palme d’Or during the festival.

Past recipients of an honorary Palme d’Or include US actors Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington, as well as legendary Japanese animators Studio Ghibli.

Streisand began performing in the early 1960s in nightclubs and Broadway theatres, which led to guest appearances on various television shows. Her studio debut, The Barbra Streisand Album (1963), won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. During her recording career, Streisand has amassed a total of 31 RIAA platinum-certified albums, including People (1964), The Way We Were (1974), Guilty (1980), The Broadway Album (1985), and Higher Ground (1997).