"One thing’s for sure: Now when I look at Funny Girl, I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice." So said Barbra Streisand, who is not your typical beauty in her new film, Meet the Fockers. Not that a frizzy-haired, Jewish, hippie sex therapist can’t be beautiful. But Streisand, in all of her diva-esque glory, has never been afraid to show her not-so-glam side. An indomitable force since her 1964 blockbuster album People, and then her 1968 movie début in Funny Girl, she’s always been an unlikely star in the world of Hollywood mannequins. Her close-set eyes, long, slightly askew nose and full lips have become her trademark, and over the years she has learned to use them to her advantage—playing up her eyes, and wearing pale shades on her lips. Her varying hairstyles can be used as a trend timeline: short and bouffant in the sixties, long and stick-straight in the early seventies—big and curly in the late seventies. The late eighties and nineties saw her styled into the longish bob she still wears today. Her fashion sense has transformed over the years as well, and her close relationship with Donna Karan has informed her current look—simple, elegant, nothing too revealing or fitted. The one constant has been her long talonlike fingernails, which she manages to incorporate into most of her movie roles. What’s up with that, pussycat?

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