By Guy D. Garcia

Big Bird, move over. Rose Bird has come, for one show at least, to children's TV. The chief justice of California's Supreme Court makes her television acting debut next week on Richard Pryor's Pryor's Place. Well, she didn't have to act too much. Justice Bird, 47, plays--what else?--a judge in a segment that deals with the fears of children whose parents are divorcing. "I think any program that helps make the courts less frightening to children whose parents are getting a divorce is worthwhile," said Bird. She was invited to do the show by Producer Marty Krofft, a friend, who thought "she was excellent." And also demanding. The chief ruled that her scene was not enough like a real legal conference in a judge's chambers. The script was rewritten.

"Face in the mirror looks the same./ Every morning I keep looking for a change." Color her chameleon, for Barbra Streisand's persona seems constantly to change, if not every morning, at least with the times. And certainly with the trends. The lyrics are from her new album, Emotion, and to promote it she made her first video, which debuted last week (with Kris Kristofferson, 45, as her unbilled costar) on Entertainment Tonight. Since what's new is neo and what's hot is retro, the 6-min. clip for the song Left in the Dark features La Streisand as a vampy songstress in an Edward Hopper-style nightclub and in a '50s film noir setting. For Streisand, to compose a slight variation on an old theme of hers, the way she is is never the way she was.

"I've finally met Mr. Right," muses Actress Louise Fletcher, 48. "I was really amazed at his work discipline. When the director told him to hit his mark, he was right there." Fletcher's co-star is obviously a seasoned pro; indeed, C.J. the orangutan, 13, has charmed moviegoers as the swinging simian in Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You Can (1980), and starred last year in the short-lived Mr. Smith television series. He and the huggable Fletcher met on the set of My Secret Friend, a TV movie to be aired on CBS this winter. In an unusual bit of crosscasting, he plays a gorilla. She plays a scientist who teaches him to communicate in sign language, which comes in handy when the primate is eventually befriended by a young deaf boy (portrayed by Sean Gerlis, 12, who is deaf in real life too). Fletcher figures there was no way to avoid being upstaged. Says she: "I mean, you put together an innocent little child's face and an animal acting like a human, and they're irresistible."

The joke was not on him. When he first heard the news, Comedian-Mime Bill Irwin, 34, thought they were trying to kid a kidder. But in truth he had become the first active performing artist to receive a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. The so-called genius award means that Irwin, who charmed audiences with his 1982 The Regard of Flight clown show, will get $180,000 over the next five years. Awards last week also went to 24 others, including a Georgia country doctor, Curtis Names Sr., 64, and the founder of the World Institute on Disability, Edward Roberts, 45, who is a quadriplegic. The grants are for any use the recipient wishes. Irwin, who will make his Broadway debut next month in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, plans to use part of the cash to quit teaching and write. "A few friends of mine asked if it would blunt my competitive edge as an actor," says the rubbery-faced performer. "I guess anything--too lean or too fat--can blunt you if you let it."

--By Guy D. Garcia

On the Record

Roberto C. Goizueta, 52, board chairman of Coca-Cola, the parent company of Columbia Pictures, on his lack of box-office acumen: "When I came out of [Columbia's] Ghostbusters, I thought, 'Gee, we're going to lose our shirts.' "

Mario Vargas Llosa, 48, on the paradox of being a Latin American novelist: "Because you know how to read and write, you have an audience, you are respected--even by people who repress you and sometimes put you in prison or even kill you. In fact, if you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know."