Barbra Streisand

She was the first woman to write, direct, produce, and star in a Hollywood film... and later raised $25M for women’s heart health.

In the early 1960s, Barbra Streisand was a broke teenager sleeping on an army cot she carried from couch to couch.

She was 16, living alone in New York, rejected by casting directors and begged by her mother to give up.

Still, one day, she entered a talent show at a Greenwich Village nightclub. And won.

Next, she got booked at the Bon Soir for $125 a week and made a demo tape.

Then she landed a part in a Broadway musical, “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”

She was 19. The show flopped. Her performance didn’t.

Groucho Marx called her “too young to be this good.”

Elliott Gould (her co-star) called her “beyond brilliant.”

Columbia Records called her something else: a risk.

She signed with them anyway, on her terms.

She gave up money in exchange for creative control.

She refused to do pop hits. Refused to change her look. Refused to change her name.

The label wanted to call her first album “Sweet and Saucy Streisand.”

She insisted: “The Barbra Streisand Album.”

It won three Grammys, including Album of the Year.

By 22, she was the bestselling female vocalist in America.

And she kept going…

She won an Oscar in her film debut (Funny Girl, 1968).

She starred in hits like “Hello, Dolly!,” “What’s Up, Doc?,” “The Way We Were,” and “A Star Is Born.”

And she co-founded First Artists, a production company with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, so she could develop her own movies.

In 1983, every studio said no to her passion project: Yentl.

A film about a woman disguising herself as a man to study the Talmud.

So she financed it. Directed it. Produced it. Starred in it.

Yentl made her the first woman in Hollywood history to write, direct, produce, and star in a major studio film.

She won the Golden Globe for Best Director, the only woman to ever win it for the next 37 years.

By the '90s, she wasn’t just an icon. She was a mogul.

She directed and produced “The Prince of Tides” (7 Oscar noms), and “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

Her HBO concert special won five Emmys.

Her 2006 tour grossed $92M, at age 64.

She sold more than 150M records.

She holds 68.5M certified album units in the US alone.

She has won every major entertainment award: Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Peabody, Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And she’s the only artist to have a #1 album in six different decades.

In 2008, she donated $5M to Cedars-Sinai to found the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center.

The mission: address the gender gap in heart disease diagnosis and treatment.

The irony? In 1991, the New England Journal of Medicine coined the term “Yentl Syndrome” to describe how women’s heart conditions were being ignored, unless they presented like men.

Through the Streisand Foundation (est. 1986), Streisand has donated over $25M to civil rights, women’s health, the environment, education, and nuclear disarmament.