SHE’S a feminist icon and bona fide pop legend with a songbook of much-loved hits.
And Cyndi Lauper appears to have discovered the fountain of youth too in a new video discussing grants to organisations ensuring safe abortions and reproductive healthcare.
The 70-year-old star told how her Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund at the Tides Foundation dished out a whopping $155,000 last year to worthy organisations.
The multi-talented philanthropist has done it all over her four decade career, from topping the charts to taking Broadway by storm and winning prestigious awards.
In 2013 Kinky Boots, the musical based on a Northampton shoe company that produced men’s fetish wear, was named best musical at the Tony Awards and Lauper won best original score.
She told the Telegraph in 2016: “You can have all the awards in the world, but I got Best Musical, and that means everything to me,” she says. “All my life, all the record company told me was ‘You’re Cyndi Lauper, you can’t write songs like that!’ They wanted me to write Girls Just Want to Have Fun over and over again. I didn’t want to.”
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The New York legend’s success has always been against the odds ever since her emergence on the music scene aged 30 as a punky poster girl.
She said: “I think my anger fuelled me.”
The spirited star never backed down from a fight, especially when stuffy record execs asked her demeaning question like “is that what you’re wearing? Why can’t you dress more like Katrina & the Waves?”
Ultimately, Lauper had the last laugh with hits like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Time After Time, She’s Bop and True Colors storming the charts.
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She has had a settled personal life too having been married to David Thornton since 1991.
Thornton is an actor who has appeared in dozens of films and television shows, including the movies John Q and My Sister’s Keeper.
The couple have a 26-year-old son, singer Dex Lauper.
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