The woman who traded her fee for the final cut

When Barbra Streisand signed with Columbia Records in the early 1960s, she made an unusual deal. She would accept lower pay, and in return she kept full artistic control over her performances. She held to that arrangement throughout her career. Her studio debut, The Barbra Streisand Album, came out in 1963 and won the Grammy for Album of the Year, after she had made her name in nightclubs and on Broadway.

The records kept coming. She has 31 platinum-certified albums, among them People, The Way We Were, Guilty and The Broadway Album. She was the first woman to score 11 number one albums on the Billboard 200 and remains the only artist to top that chart in six decades. Five of her singles reached No. 1 on the Hot 100, including “The Way We Were”, “Evergreen” and “Woman in Love”. Worldwide, her sales exceed 150 million records.

Film was the second front. Funny Girl in 1968 won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and she followed it with Hello, Dolly!, What's Up, Doc? and The Way We Were. She also won an Oscar for the love theme from A Star Is Born, the first woman honoured as a composer. With Yentl in 1983 she became the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major studio film, and she won the Golden Globe for Best Director.

Together the prizes read like a checklist: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, the full EGOT, plus ten Grammys, nine Golden Globes, four Peabody Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Behind the list sits a simple pattern. Whenever she moved into a new field, she insisted on deciding how it would sound or look. A voice that big could have been a gift to others. She chose to be its owner.