"I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven." (Barbra Streisand)

"I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me." (Barbra Streisand)

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

It should come as no surprise that Barbra Streisand allegedly once declared that she never had any idols as a child, because given how unusual her career has been, it's hard to determine who might have served as her inspiration. And as the star once put it, "I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way." To be sure, strong-willed women had populated both cinema and popular culture before Streisand, like Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford, but Streisand was unique in her ability to appeal to diverse groups in America. She also arrived at a time when acting roles for women were generally less flexible than they would become by the end of the century. Making her story all the more compelling is that Streisand never met conventional standards of American beauty or acting style.