Barbra Streisand Says Fear that Surgery Would Impact Her Legendary Voice Made Her Resist a Nose Job

Barbra Streisand has always held her own – especially when it comes to her voice.

In an excerpt from her long-awaited memoir My name is Barbra shared with PEOPLE in this week’s issue, Streisand, 81, says she’s been told repeatedly that she should get a nose job and get her teeth sealed in order to be more successful in showbiz.

“I meant, Is my talent not enough? A nose job would hurt and be expensive,” she writes. “Besides, how can I trust anyone to do exactly what I want and nothing else?”

Streisand says she always liked the little bump on her nose and never went ahead with any surgery because she was afraid it might affect her legendary voice.

“It was too big a risk. And who knew what that might do to my voice? A doctor once told me I had a deviated septum… maybe that’s why I sound like that,” she writes. “Also, I liked the long noses… the Italian actress Silvana Mangano had one and everyone seemed to think she was beautiful.”

Barbra Streisand to write an audiobook for her new memoir, My name is Barbra

The famous profile of Barbra Streisand from 1966.

CBS Photo Archive via Getty

In another passage, Streisand laments the fact that she feels her nose has often attracted more media attention than she has, referring to the 1964 Time magazine cover in which the writer called her a “shrine” that gave her face “the essence of a dog.”

The star admits in her book that decades later she is “still hurt by the insults and can’t really believe the compliments.”

“I guess when you become famous, you become public property,” she writes. “You are an object that needs to be examined, photographed, analyzed, dissected… and half the time I don’t recognize the person they are portraying. I never got used to it and I try to avoid reading anything about myself.”

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Elsewhere in Streisand’s revealing memoir, she shares stories from the set of movies like Yentl, What we were and A star is bornas well as details of her performances with stars such as Marlon Brando, Don Johnson and future husband James Brolin.

For more on Barbra Streisand, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

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Source: HIS Education