Barbara Joan Streisand was born in Brooklyn, NY, to a Jewish family. When she was a year old, her father had died, and her mother had struggled financially, working as a low-paid bookkeeper. Streisand received her early education in Jewish institutes. She was a shy child, been rejected by other children because of her looks, and spending much of her time watching TV and going to the movies. At 13, while on vacation at the Catskills, Streisand and her mother, a soprano in her youth, recorded songs on tape. That was the first time that she thought of herself as an artist. In the following year, after watching her first Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank, she decided to become an actress. She began to explore the profession, reading plays, acting theories, and biographies of stage actresses. At 15, she got her first job in the business as backstage assistance at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. At 16, after graduating from Erasmus Hall High School with honors, Streisand moved by herself to the Theater District, sleeping with friends while trying to get roles on the stage. At 18, Streisand won a talent contest at the Lion nightclub and started to sing at clubs in the area. During that time, she began to develop her stage persona, creating emotional characters, working on her singing range, and speaking to the audience between songs. In 1962, after two years of performing in various nightclubs, Streisand landed her first role in a Broadway production, playing Miss Marmelstein in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. It got her the first Tony nomination and her first husband, Elliott Gould. Their marriage lasted for 6 years, and they had a son together. Becoming an immediate sensation, Streisand made her first television appearance on The Tonight Show, and later on The Judy Garland Show and The Garry Moore Show, where she sang for the first time her signature song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” In 1963, Streisand released her first album, the Barbra Streisand Album, for which she won three Grammy Awards. In the following year, she returned to Broadway, playing Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, a role she played again in the movie adaption in 1968, receiving an Academy Award for her performance. During the 60s and 70s, Streisand established her status as a multi-talented performer, releasing a series of award-winning albums, such as Stoney End, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, and Guilty, while starring in various box-office hits, including Hello, Dolly!, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Way We Were, and A Star Is Born. In 1972, she founded the Barwood Films production, making her directorial debut in the movie Yentl in 1983, for which she became the first woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Director. She continued to produce, direct and star in the films The Prince of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces. In 1985, Streisand released The Broadway Album, which reached No. 1 in the Billboard chart for three weeks, earning her quadruple platinum and her 8th Grammy award for Best Female Vocalist. Between 1986 – 1991 she released three more albums, including a four-disc box set, Just for the Record. For many years, Streisand avoided live performance, but in the 90s, she returned to the stage. Started as a two-night New Year’s event, her show turned into a multi-city tour with ticket prices reaching $1,500, making Streisand the highest-paid concert performer in history and earning her five Emmy awards. At the age of 55, after almost 10 years, Streisand released an album of new songs, titled Higher Ground, once again reaching the top of the Billboard chart and earning her two Grammy nominations. In 2004, after a leave of 8 years, Streisand returned to film acting in the movie Meet the Fockers. She continued to appear in various guest roles in many TV shows and TV specials, recording soundtracks and releasing singles and records, including her 2018 protest album, Walls. Streisand uses her fame and fortune to promote political and social causes, raising millions of dollars through live performances. She donated a building to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gifted $5 million to the Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and with the Streisand Foundation she founded in 1988, she contributed more than $16 million to organizations that promote the preservation of the environment, civil rights, women’s issues, civil liberties, and nuclear disarmament. Throughout her career, she has recorded 50 studio albums and 10 live records. She appeared in 19 films, directed 3 movies, and produced approximately 30 projects. She received 52 gold albums, 31 platinum albums, and 13 multi-platinum albums, becoming the most decorated recording artist in history. Read more...

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Brussels, Belgium. Her mother was a Dutch baroness, and her father was British with an aristocratic background. In her early childhood, the family traveled between Brussels and England. At the age of 6, after her father left the family, she moved with her mother to the family estate in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and two years later, she returned to England to attend boarding school. In 1939, after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Hepburn returned to Arnhem, thinking that it would remain neutral. During WWII, Hepburn and her mother were relatively safe but did endure hardships – her half-brother got deported to a German labor camp, her uncle was murdered, and she suffered from anemia as a result of malnutrition due to the 1944 Dutch famine. After the war, 16 years old Hepburn moved with her mother to Amsterdam, where she worked at the Royal Military Invalids Home and continued her ballet training. At 19, she returned to London to study acting and ballet, supporting herself by working as a model. When she was told that she was too tall and too weak to become a prima ballerina, Hepburn channeled her focus toward acting. At 23, while shooting a film in Monte-Carlo, Hepburn caught the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s attention. who decided to cast her for the leading role in the Broadway adaptation of her novel Gigi. Hepburn received praises for her performance, and in the same year, she launched her Hollywood career, starring in the movie Roman Holiday alongside Gregory Peck. The film was a hit, and Hepburn charmed the audience with her portrayal of the young princess, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Following her success, Hepburn signed a seven-picture contract with Paramount Studios, which included the film, Sabrina, gaining her another BAFTA Award. In 1954, Hepburn returned to the stage as the water nymph in Ondine, for which she received a Tony Award. At the production, she met her first husband, her co-star Mel Ferrer, and the couple settled in Switzerland, the place she called home when she did not film in the US. In the next decade, Hepburn starred in a series of successful features, such as War and Peace, The Nun’s Story, and Green Mansions, starring alongside A-list actors. In her 30’s, Hepburn began playing more sophisticated and worldly characters. Including her acclaimed appearance as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Regina in the thriller Charade, and Eliza Doolittle in the musical, My Fair Lady. At 40, after her divorce, Hepburn decided to focus on her family and went into semi-retirement for a few years. She married the Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti and had another child. At the age of 47, she resumed her acting career, appearing alongside Sean Connery in Robin and Marian and hosting a traveling documentary-series called Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn. Her last film role was in 1989 as the angel in Steven Spielberg’s Always. Overall, Hepburn participated in more than 20 movies and received more than 10 awards for her performances. Throughout her career, Hepburn was known as a fashion icon, recognized for her distinctive look and fashion choices. She had a unique, minimalistic style, wearing clothes with simple silhouettes and monochromatic colors, associated mainly with the “little black dress” she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Since 1988, Hepburn devoted herself to her duty as a special Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). She traveled to famine-stricken areas to raise awareness of children in need, making more than 50 trips to Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. In 1992, after returning from Somalia, Hepburn was diagnosed with colon cancer. She died in her home in Switzerland at the age of 63. Read more...

Gertrude Jeannette was born in Urbana, Arkansas, where she grew up on a farm with her six siblings. During the Great Depression, the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. She attended the segregated Dunbar High School and planned to enroll at Fisk University. On her prom night, she met Joe Jeannette, who was 35 years older than her, and just before her graduation, the couple eloped to NYC. There, Jeannette became involved in the civil rights movement. Jeannette’s husband, a heavyweight boxer and the president of the Harlem Dusters motorcycle club taught her how to drive a motorcycle. In 1935, she became the first woman in NYC to have a motorcycle license. During WW2, the city had a shortage of taxi drivers, Jeannette took the call, and in 1942, at the age of 28, she passed the cab driver’s test and became the first woman in NYC to have a taxi driver license. With her new income, Jeannette wanted to further her education, and while attending bookkeeping classes, she took a speech class at the American Negro Theatre to correct her stammer. As part of the theater’s curriculum, Jeannette was obliged to take an acting class, which changed the course of her life. At 31, Jeannette began her acting career, landing her first lead role in the play “Our Town,” and four years later, she performed in her first Broadway production – “Lost in the Stars.” Jeannette saw the lack of authentic black characters in the theater, so she started to write her plays. Her first production, “The Way Forward,” premiered in 1950. In this autobiographical play, Jeannette depicted the life of the sharecroppers in the South. As in her other plays, she presented strong African-American characters and dealt with topics such as racism, education, politics, and family issues. In the same year, Jeannette was featured in the TV Hour production of the “God’s Trombones,” adding another first to her list as the first African-American actress to appear on National Television. Jeannette continued to appear in various Broadway productions, films, and TV shows. Her credits include titles such as “Nothing but a Man,” “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” “Shaft,” and “Black Girl.” In 1979, Jeannette founded the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players (Harlem Artist’s Development League Especially for You), a theater company, which gave artists a place to develop their skills, enriching the cultural life in Harlem. Jeannette acted, directed, and wrote until her retirement at the age of 98. She died at her home in Harlem at the age of 103. Read more...

Ann Clare Boothe Luce was born and raised in NYC. Her mother wanted her to become an actress, and from the age of 10, she studied at Mary Pickford on Broadway, playing first in Broadway by the age of 11. At the age of 20, she married George Tuttle Brokaw, a millionaire heir who was 23 years older than her. They had one daughter before they got divorced. At 27 years old, Luce started to work at Vogue as a caption writer, and later as associate editor, managing editor, and column writer at Vanity Fair. In 1931, she published her first book, a volume of short stories titled “Stuffed Shirts.” In 1935, her first playwright, “Abide with Me,” was staged but failed. Soon after, she wrote the satirical comedy, “The Women,” with an all-female cast of 40 characters. This pioneer play was a Broadway hit and soon was adapted into a movie. Following the success, she wrote two more plays that were adapted into movies – Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Margin for Error. At the age of 32, she married Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. In 1939, when WW2 has erupted, she traveled to Europe as a correspondent for Life magazine. In 1941, she and her husband went to China to report on the status of the war with Japan. When the US entered the war, Luce visited military installations in Africa, China, India, and Burma. In 1942, at the age of 39, Luce won a seat representing Connecticut in the US House of Representatives, the first woman from Connecticut to be elected to Congress. During her term, she called for the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, advocated aid for war victims abroad, and lobbied for issues such as infant-care, maternity appropriations for the wives of enlisted men, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the development of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She was a member of the House Military Affairs Committee and had a pivotal role in creating the Atomic Energy Commission. She co-authored the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 to permit Filipinos and Indians permission to immigrate to the US, and she proposed a bill to create a Labor Department bureau to ensure equal pay for equal work for women and minorities. In 1944, her 19 years old daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, died in a car accident. Dealing with the tragedy, she began to explore religion and received into the Roman Catholic Church. She did not run for re-election. When WW2 ended, Luce became a loud advocate against international Communism. During the presidential election of 1952, she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower, giving more than 100 speeches nationwide. Thanks for her contribution, she was appointed as the US ambassador to Italy – the first American woman to serve in a major ambassadorial post abroad. She resigned from her position after three years due to arsenic poisoning that impacted her physically and mentally. In 1973 Luce was appointed by President Nixon to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. She remained on the board until 1977, and then again in 1981, was appointed by President Reagan. In 1983, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first female Congress member to receive the award. Three years later, at the age of 84, she died of brain cancer. Read more...

Julie Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her interest in theatre began at a young age, producing family and friends’ performances in the backyard. At the age of 10, she joined the Boston Children’s Theatre, and by the age of 13, she joined Julie Portman Theatre Workshop, in which she discovered the art of “Living Theatre.” She graduated high school at 16 and went to Paris to attend the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. There she learned mime and developed physical sensibilities, which later she used many times in her productions. At the age of 18, Taymor returned to the US and studied folklore and mythology studies at Oberlin College, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors. At 22, with the Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship, she traveled to Japan and Indonesia, studying the local theater and art forms. She stayed in Indonesia for four years, founding the Teatr Loh – a mask and dance company with actors, dancers, musicians, and puppeteers from all around the world. In 1980, Taymor came back to the US, settling in NYC. Around that time, she met the composer Elliot Goldenthal, who became her life partner and artistic collaborator. Her career took off in New York, designing masks, costumes, and puppets for various productions, including The Haggadah, Black Elk Lives, and Savages. At the same time, she promoted several projects of her own, adapting materials into the theater and directing numerous plays, including The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and Titus Andronicus. In 1997, Taymor’s Broadway production of The Lion King had premiered. Not only she directed the musical but also designed the costumes, masks, and puppets. The musical became the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time, performing in more than 12 countries and seen by over 45 million people worldwide. Taymor became the first woman to receive the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. In 1992, at the age of 40, she directed her first opera – Oedipus rex by Stravinsky. She loved it and continued to direct one production after another, including The Flying Dutchman by Wagner, Salome by Richard Strauss, and The Magic Flute by Mozart. In the same year, she also directed her first film – Fool’s Fire. Over the years, she adapted many of her opera and theater productions into movies, such as Oedipus rex, Titus, and The Tempest. In 2002, she directed her acclaimed film Frida, depicting the life story of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her next movie was Jukebox musical Across the Universe – a love story during the Vietnam War set to the soundtrack of The Beatles. In 2020, she released the film The Glorias, following the life of the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Read more...

Rosa Dolores Alverio was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, and grew up in nearby Juncos. At the age of 5, after her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to NYC. When her mother remarried, she adopted her stepfather’s surname – Moreno. The family settled in Valley Stream, New York, where she took dance classes and paved her way into the entertainment industry. At 11, she began dubbing Spanish-language versions of American films, and at 13, she had her Broadway debut, playing Angelina in Skydrift. Five years later, Moreno had her first big-screen appearance in the movie So Young, So Bad, and after it, she adapted her stage name – Rita Moreno. She acted throughout the 1950s, landing small roles in notable films such as Singin’ in the Rain and The King and I. In 1961, Moreno played Anita’s role in the film adaptation of West Side Story, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar. With such accolade in her resume, Moreno thought that she would be able to play less stereotypical characters for her next films, and with no such offer, she did not perform in another movie for the next seven years. At 33, she returned to Broadway, performing in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, and continued to play in one production after another, winning her Tony in 1975 for her depiction of Googie Gomez in The Ritz. In 1968 Moreno returned to film, starring alongside Marlon Brando in The Night of the Following Day. She continued to steadily appear on screen in different genres, from romantic comedies such as The Four Seasons to dramas such as King of the Corner. Moreno’s first serious role in TV was in 1971 in the children’s series The Electric Company, becoming recognized for shouting the show’s opening line, “Hey, you guys!” and winning a Grammy Award with her fellow cast members. In 1977, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program for her appearance on The Muppet Show, becoming the first Hispanic woman and the third person to win an EGOT – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. Over the years, she made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, including The Love Boat, The Golden Girls, The Nanny, and Miami Vice, and steady roles in various acclaimed shows, such as Sister Pete on Oz and as the matriarch Lydia Riera on One Day at a Time. Read more...

When she was 58 years, old Madonna stepped on the stage to receive Billboard’s 2016 Woman of the Year award. The highest-grossing female touring artist of all time was selected due to her influence on music, her vision, innovation, philanthropic work, and her contribution to feminist change towards equal rights. Madonna used the occasion to deliver a daring speech, describing the sexist and ageist behavior that she had to overcome in her career as a musician, actress, and entrepreneur. She outlined her path from her childhood in a small Michigan town, through her first years as a struggling dancer in late 1970s New York City, to becoming the “Queen of Pop Music” with 14 albums, dozen of top hits worldwide, sales of 300 million records and many awards. In 2019 she released her 14th album, ‘Madame X,’ a name given to her by Martha Graham. She delivered her first birth at 38 and is now a single mother of six. Through her career, she pushed the boundaries of music and gender politics. Her influence on women’s liberation was by presenting new ways of owning her sexuality through mainstream media. Read more...

Born in NYC and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. From age 5, her father sexually and physically abused her. Her mother knew of the abuse but was scared to interfere. The molestation stopped when Ensler was 10 years old, upon his death. As a teen, she used alcohol as a coping mechanism, an addiction that continued into her mid 20’s. At 22, after graduating from college, she had a series of abusive relationships, which dragged her deep into her addiction, and she started using drugs regularly. At 24, she married Richard McDermott, who convinced her to go to rehab. The couple divorced after ten years, during that time she adopted his biological son – the actor Dylan McDermott. After she got sober, she started writing for the theater. As a survivor of sexual abuse, Ensler suffered from physical disassociation, feeling that she could not inhabit her own body. In an attempt to understand her experience, she interviewed other women about their experiences; those interviews were the basis for the groundbreaking play “The Vagina Monologues.” The play explores subjects such as body image, consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, encounters with reproduction, menstrual periods, and vaginal care. It became a worldwide phenomenon, translated into 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. Knowing for herself how it feels to be abused, she decided to dedicate her life to end violence against girls and women, and in 1998 she founded V-Day – a global movement advocating for ending gender terror. The organization founded more than 12,000 anti-violence programs all over the world. In 2011, they opened the City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which provides a community for survivors of gender violence. In 2012, the organization, led by Ensler, created the One Billion Rising campaign, fighting for justice and gender equality for women worldwide. Over the years she wrote 12 plays and 10 books, most of them are exploring women’s perspectives of social conventions. She has also been involved in several films, including the television version of The Vagina Monologues, “Until The Violence Stops,” and “What I Want My Words To Do To You.” In her 50’s she struggled with uterine cancer, which she details in her memoir “In the Body of the World.” Read more...

Katherine Mary Dunham was born in Chicago in 1909. Her father was a descendant of slaves from West Africa, and her mother was a mix of French-Canadian and Native-American heritage. From a young age, she was interested in writing and dance. She went to study anthropology at the University of Chicago. She continued studying classical ballet and forming her first dance group, which was one of the first companies of all-black dancers. At 23, she opened her first dance school, the Negro Dance Group. Three years later, she chose to focus on dance after receiving a grant and visiting in the Caribbean islands and Haiti as an anthropology student. Her field of mastery was in the dance rituals of the African diaspora in the Caribbean. Her studies inspired her unique technique, which revolutionized the world of dance by combining the Caribbean and African ritual rhythm and movement, with European modern and ballet dancing. Dunham and the Negro Dance Group performed together and separately in Chicago and New York City with choreography created by Dunham. They were well-received by critics and crowds. After the immense success which led them to Broadway, she opened the “Katherine Dunham School of Dance and Theatre” near Times Square in NYC. The school taught dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills, humanities, cultural studies, and Caribbean research, and was an inspiration for art schools worldwide. Dunham and her dance company toured all over the world for many years, introducing her novel technique of dance. Due to financial difficulties, they returned to the US, and Dunham did choreographic commissions across the US and Europe. Among the many firsts she acclaimed are one of the first African-American women to earn a degree from the University of Chicago, the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company, the first African-American to choreograph for the New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In 1967 she officially retired but continued to choreograph. She died in 2006, a month before her 97th birthday. Read more...

Born as Ava Lavinia Gardner in Grabtown, NC, to a poor family of tobacco farmers, the youngest of 7 children. After graduating high school, she attended secretarial classes for a year. At 18, while visiting her sister in NYC, her brother-in-law, who was a professional photographer, took her portrait and put it on display in the front window of his studio. A legal clerk who worked as an MGM talent scout spotted her photo and suggested to send her info to the studios. Despite her Carolina drawl and with zero acting experience, Gardner was offered a contract and moved to Hollywood. Gardner began taking diction lessons as well as acting, gymnastics, fashion, and makeup lessons, and at 19, she made her first appearance in the film “We Were Dancing”. For the next 5 years, she played mainly small decorative parts, until in 1946, she came to prominence playing the femme fatale Kitty Collins in “The Killers”, a typecast that she would play over and over in her career. During the following 18 years, she played in the biggest movies of the time, acting alongside A-list actors, such as Robert Taylor, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. As she aged, she struggled landing roles, and at age 42, she played her last major leading role in the film “The Night of the Iguana”. In the 70’s she appeared briefly in several movies, especially disaster films, and in the 80’s she acted mainly on television. At the age of 60, she filmed her last film, “Regina Roma”. When she was 29 years old, after already getting divorced twice, she married Frank Sinatra. It lasted only six years, and after the failure of her third marriage and without children, she moved to Spain and then to London, where she lived for 22 years until her death at the age of 67. In her legendary career, Gardner appeared in more than 60 films and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award. Read more...