How Barbra Streisand Saved Lea Michele’s Nose
Image by Getty Images
Barbra Streisand may have been slightly disappointed with Jennifer Aniston’s smooth-nosed “Funny Girl” homage, but at least she can take personal credit for Lea Michele’s distinctive schnoz.
“My mother would say to me, ‘Barbra Streisand never got a nose job. You’re not getting a nose job,’ ” the “Glee” star says in the latest issue of Allure magazine.
The half-Jewish Michele should be glad she didn’t: In addition to adding a bit more personality to her beautiful face, the decision to skip surgery may have preserved the voice that’s served her so well on Broadway and TV.
Michele tells Allure that an early manager suggested surgery to change her nose. Too young to know who Streisand was, the actress nevertheless sensed the role Streisand had played in redefining what talented singer-actresses can look like.
“This was before I really even knew who Barbra was,” Michele says. “I just knew that she was, like, the messiah for girls like me.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
