EDWARDS CAPTURES BARBRA STREISAND'S COMPLETE PICTURE.

Byline: Cassandra Smith Special to the Daily News

For those who love Barbra Streisand, there are no compliments large enough to embrace her many talents as a singer, actress, director, writer and producer. She has evolved into a film auteur and pop icon with a passion and determination all her own.

With all that has been written about Streisand, however, she is not an easy performer to capture in print. Yet veteran celebrity author Anne Edwards has crafted a vivid portrait of a complex woman who is as selfish as she is selfless. A performer who has as many devoted fans as she has vociferous detractors.

Edwards appears to have a love-hate relationship with her subject. She fully acknowledges Streisand's phenomenal voice and lyricism, but she carefully and specifically points out the difficulties of her working with others, be they actors or composers, directors or writers. Edwards cites ``over 100 people'' she spoke with about Streisand, all demanding anonymity. According to Edwards, Streisand demands that her employees sign papers binding them to silence and threatening them with the loss of their job if they discuss their work with her, which is ``at extreme odds with all her professed liberalism.''

But Nick Nolte, Streisand's co-star in ``The Prince of Tides,'' best explains Streisand's failure as a team player.

``It's a really lonely job to be a singer, a totally different mentality,'' Nolte says. ``It's all about me. The lights have to be right for me,'' Nolte said describing Streisand. ``(Entertainers) come on the set, and they don't know how to share. They don't want to stick around for off-camera work. They have not grown up with a sense of teamsmanship. It makes it very hard for them to be taken seriously in the acting community,'' Nolte said.

``Barbra's more tolerant as a director. You really don't have time to focus on yourself, and in that position she works real fine,'' Nolte said.

Edwards delivers a compulsive read of a rags-to-riches story of a Brooklyn-born Jewish girl with insecurities as wide as the East River, who made it big time. Her well-known stage fright and need to control everything and everyone around her may be rooted in her loss of a father at 15 months old and a mother who failed to give her the unconditional and emotional love she craved.

But fame often costs a lot. For Streisand, who harbors a multitude of fears and phobias, her story is told in great detail by Edwards, who has penned books on the lives of Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland and Katharine Hepburn.

Streisand's Broadway career began in 1962, with a small role in the musical ``I Can Get It for You Wholesale.'' She ended up stealing the show. It was during that play that she met future husband Elliot Gould. The couple had one son, Jason, in 1966, but they later divorced.

In the years since her marriage to Gould, Streisand has had numerous love interests, including former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, newsman Peter Jennings, salon owner Jon Peters, ice cream magnate Richard Baskin, actors Warren Beatty, Omar Sharif, Don Johnson and current flame actor James Brolin.

She has often not endeared herself to her colleagues. Two years after her first Broadway musical, she captured the lead in ``Funny Girl'' on Broadway, and later she starred in the film version of ``Hello Dolly'' with Walter Matthau. ``The trouble with Barbra,'' Matthau said, ``is, she became a star long before she became an actress.'' He calls working on ``Hello Dolly,'' ``a most unpleasant picture to work on and, as most of my scenes were with her, extremely distasteful.'' He calls the experience ``agony most of the time ... I was appalled at every move she made.''

But, as Edwards tells it, Streisand always wanted to make movies. In movies, she discovered she could work and rework a scene to her idea of perfection. She could use lighting and angles to emphasize her trim figure and blue eyes and downplay her nose.

Streisand has made her dent politically by giving to liberal causes and Democratic candidates.

``Chutzpah, guts, strength - call it what you may, Streisand defines it,'' Edwards writes at the end of her book. ``She has also dared - off and on screen - to hazard beyond ordinariness into the adventurous extreme. She has made ethnicity a great advantage, turned style around so it mimicked her own, and has a voice that has never grown reedy or dropped in to tobacco or alcoholic huskiness'' the author says.

The book includes full listings of Streisand's film, recordings, TV and theater credits. Edwards also provides an index, notes and bibliography, as well as 28 pages of black-and-white photographs.

The Facts

Title: ``Streisand: A Biography''

Author: Anne Edwards

Data: 600 pages, Little Brown & Co.; $24.95

Our rating: Three stars

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Photo

Photo: Barbra Streisand has often not endeared herself to her colleagues. ``The trouble,'' movie co-star Walter Matthau said, ``is she became a star long before she became an actress.''