When Jack Nicholson Acted with Streisand In "On a Clear Day," She Didn't Know Who He Was

Its 2023 and Barbra Streisand has a 992 autobio out. Its a deserved length. She's worked a long time, she's a singing legend and -- she made a few movies, too. Often opposite very interesting male stars like Omar Sharif(Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago), Walter Matthau(The Odd Couple), George Segal(Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), Ryan O'Neal(Love Story) and (perhaps above all) Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy, The Sting.)

Turns out she worked with Jack Nicholson, too, but per the book -- she had no idea who he was when she worked with him.

He had completed Easy Rider, she noted, but it had not been released yet, when he bagged a small role in "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever"(1970) in which the male lead was Yves Montand.

Evidently Streisand had never seen any of Nicholson's horror/biker/LSD movies for Roger Corman.

Anyway, she writes that she had no idea who he was(she probably just thought he was some unknown brought in for a bit part) but noted he had "good skin, great teeth, and an interesting voice."

Some months later, she saw Easy Rider for the first time and exclaimed to someone: "Hey, isn't that that guy who was in our movie?" Must have been funny to watch Nicholson explode from there. They never worked together again.

In her book, Streisand says another little known actor in this movie -- she doesn't name him, but it turned out to be an actor named John Richardson -- had no romantic connection even to act against and "I saw fear in his eyes, an instant turnoff." Fear about acting with a star, I guess.

So Nicholson at least didn't come out as badly as THAT guy.