Leonard Bernstein’s Daughter on His Legacy, Jewish Traditions and Bradley Cooper’s Nose
Lior Zaltzman - Kveller
Jun 3, 2022
Jamie Bernstein spends every day in what she calls “Leonard Bernstein land.” Her father, the iconic composer Leonard Bernstein, may have passed away over 30 years ago, but his legacy is still as vibrant and alive as ever.
Bernstein is the oldest of his three children, along with Alexander and Nina. As kids, they were raised mostly by their mother, Chilean-American actress and activist Felicia Montealegre, and their beloved Chilean nanny, Julia — as Bernstein recounts in her extremely compelling autobiography, “Famous Father Girl.” And yet today, the three of them are essentially “the caretakers of our dad’s legacy,” she tells Kveller, zooming in from her Manhattan apartment.
That legacy is especially present today due to the recent Steven Spielberg adaptation of “West Side Story,” whose music was composed by her dad. Bernstein loved the movie — “We just thought it was magical… Musically, we just thought it was superb. We didn’t have a complaint in the world.”