The Truth About Elliott Gould And Barbra Streisand's Relationship

Back in the 1960s, there was no couple hotter than Elliot Gould and Barbra Streisand. They were basically the "Jen and Brad" or "Justin and Hailey" of their era. They met in 1961 when Streisand, then 19, auditioned for the play "I Can Get It For You Wholesale," in which Gould was the leading man. According to Gould, Streisand was nervous at the end of her audition and didn't know what to do next so she blurted out her phone number and said, "So would somebody call me?" "I remembered her number and I called her," Gould told "CBS Sunday Morning" in 2020. 

Streisand and Gould then started dating. They married in 1963 or, as Gould told the outlet, "And [then] we got married and we had a son and we had a great life." Their son, Jason Gould, was born in 1966. Streisand and Gould ultimately separated in 1969 and divorced in 1971, but Gould has no regrets. "I also said to her, 'We did great,'" Elliott sweetly revealed during his TV appearance. "'We made it very fast and nobody has what we have. There's you and me and our kid,'" he recalled telling the superstar.

So, what went wrong between Streisand and Gould, two huge stars who seemingly had it all?

Elliot Gould once compared his marriage to Barbra Streisand to a "bath of lava," per CBS News. A year after they married, Streisand's career took off. And, in fact, she was white-hot. Her 1968 film "Funny Girl" was a smash, and she was all over the Billboard charts. (She's had 11 No. 1 albums to date.) While Gould was in huge films like "M*A*S*H," Streisand was elevated to the stratosphere. "The happiest memories I have of Barbra are when we were living together before we were married," he told Playboy (via the Independent).

In his CBS Sunday Morning interview, Gould discussed his relationship with Streisand, saying they grew in different ways. "Well, Barbra asked me at one point ... she said, 'Why did we grow apart?' And I said my question would be, 'How could we have grown apart?'" Gould explained. "And the answer to that is that we didn't grow together and the reason for that was because she became more important than us."

Gould also grew tired of being called "Mr. Streisand." "It was difficult to be married to someone who was married to their success," he told the Independent. "I was very young, she was very young, and we went as far as we could together." Gould and Streisand divorced more than 50 years ago, but they had a good thing going for eight-plus years and remain close friends to this day.

In Barbra Streisand's eyes, her marriage to Elliot Gould was great — at least in the beginning. The singer admitted to Time, "He [Gould] did help me a lot when we were married but mostly he kept my feet on the ground." Streisand's career was skyrocketing during her marriage with Gould, but while she was having the time of her life career-wise, she didn't reflect on how this could have affected the "M*A*S*H" actor. Streisand said, "At the same time, I wasn't considerate enough of his problems."

Gould struggled with constantly being labeled as "Mr.Streisand" and having no name for himself. In 2020, he shared with The Guardian, "I couldn't play the part. I had to be able to find myself, to be able to be myself. I couldn't let myself live in a mold." Looking back on the marriage, Streisand can see why Gould felt hurt and neglected by not only the media, but the singer, as well.

She told Time, "It must have been very difficult for him. Marriages between people who are self-involved is hard. It's safer for actors not to be married to one another." As we know, the two divorced, but there still seems to be a love between the pair all these years later.

Although Barbra Streisand's incredible career was one of the main reasons behind her broken marriage to Elliot Gould, the "M*A*S*H" actor still has some fond memories of his time with the "Funny Girl" actor. He admitted to Time, "Marriage to Barbra was a fantastic experience. It had a lot of chocolate soufflé and things like that" (although he did follow that up with the aforementioned "bath of lava" comparison). Despite the rocky end to their marriage, Gould looks back at the years when they were both unknown and living in a small apartment with fond nostalgia.

According to InStyle, the couple lived together before marriage, and it wasn't as glamorous as you may think. They had a one-bedroom apartment with a bed barely big enough for two. The small living quarters weren't the worst of their problems, as they also had a tiny rodent running around their home. Still, while it may seem like Gould and Streisand would want to forget this time of their life together, to the "Friends" actor, it was one of the "happiest" times in their relationship. He told Playboy (via the Independent), "The happiest memories I have of Barbra are when we were living together before we were married." So, despite their romance ending, the two experienced some joyful moments with one another.