Funny Girl gets personal

Barbra Streisand is late for our interview. An hour late, to be precise. No excuses are expected from a star who sang with Judy Garland and won an Oscar for Funny Girl when she was just 26.

She strides into the hotel suite with an army of stylists, make-up artists and handlers. Her hair is long and hangs close to her face, which is caked in foundation. She heads for the windows and closes the curtains beside her chair, opening those behind her. "Better lighting," she exclaims. "I'm always the director."

Streisand, 64, doesn't care to talk much about Meet the Fockers, her new comedy film, in which she plays a sex therapist. "I love Roz Focker, but it's not like I was dying to play her, you know what I mean?" Those intimidating eyes narrow. "I wasn't passionate about it. It was an experiment. It's been some 20 years since I just acted."

Nuts in 1987 was the last time Streisand starred in someone else's film. Ever since she has directed herself.

Famously controlling, she is ferociously detail-minded in her private life. "I'm designing a house," she reveals, "which is to me like I'm doing a movie. It's taken me five years already. In my garden now, I'm changing colours because of a fabric I can't find. You see I match flowers to fabrics. And I have to find the pottery that goes with the flower colours."

The house, a spectacular clifftop mansion in Malibu, was in court recently when Streisand sued a California state project which showed photographs of the estate. Normally she won't discuss anything involving her husband of six years, James Brolin, but today she suggests intimate parallels with her new film. Like Roz Focker, Streisand admits that she appreciates sex.

"We stay in bed a lot," she laughs. "It doesn't have to die. People can have fun and be free, and really enjoy life and sex in our later years. We usually stay in bed Saturdays and never get dressed. We have nobody around us, just our little dog, or his daughter if she is visiting, or my son.

"We watch movies. I draw. This Saturday night we had to go [to Quincy Jones's house for dinner], so we did it Sunday. We like to do a lot of hanging around. We go to the movies a lot and we travel. We love boats and so we take boat trips. Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not working, and then I say, wait a minute, I've been working since I was 11, so this is okay."

She is busier, however, than she admits, planning a new album with Barry Gibb and looking for a film to direct. She also puts in heavy hours as a Democratic party activist, ranting against George W Bush on her Barbrastreisand.com website. She campaigned vigorously for John Kerry earlier this year - to the outrage of the President and his friends.

"I find it horrific that this kind of fundamentalist extremist Right-wing radical finds no problem with Republican actors taking to politics. Arnold Schwarzenegger can become governor, Ronald Reagan can become President, Charlton Heston can become the head of the NRA [National Rifle Association], but if you're a Democrat and a liberal, that's a no-no. Somehow you're put down.

"Everything good in this country came from the liberal agenda, whether it's Medicare, social security, child labour laws, fighting against racial segregation. It's a badge of honour."

She rages against the Iraq War, singlingout Condoleezza Rice for savage condemnation. "You make such terrible mistakes, you get promoted to Secretary of State. I remember when she went on TV one Sunday morning and said that they wanted to protect the Iraqi people. Now 100,000 Iraqis are dead."