Barbra Streisand

Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/ STRY-sand; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Streisand has achieved success in various areas of the entertainment industry, including the attainment of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.

Streisand's career began in the early 1960s, performing in nightclubs and Broadway theaters, leading to guest appearances on various television shows. Signing onto Columbia Records, Streisand retained full artistic control in exchange for accepting lower pay—an arrangement that continued throughout her career. Her studio debut The Barbra Streisand Album (1963) won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Throughout her recording career, Streisand has amassed a total of 31 RIAA platinum-certified albums, including People (1964), The Way We Were (1974), Guilty (1980), The Broadway Album (1985), and Higher Ground (1997). She was the first woman to score 11 number-one albums on the US Billboard 200—from People to Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway (2016)—and remains the only artist to top the chart in six decades. Streisand also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 with five singles: "The Way We Were", "Evergreen", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "Woman in Love".

Following her established recording success, Streisand ventured into film by the end of the 1960s. She starred in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl (1968), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. Additional fame on the big screen followed with the extravagant musical Hello, Dolly! (1969), the screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), and the romantic drama The Way We Were (1973). Streisand won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for writing the love theme from A Star Is Born (1976), the first woman to be honored as a composer. With the release of Yentl (1983), Streisand became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical. Streisand also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, becoming the first (and for 37 years, the only) woman to win that award. Streisand then produced and directed The Prince of Tides (1991), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

With sales exceeding 150 million records worldwide, Streisand is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the second-highest certified female artist in the United States, with 68.5 million certified album units. Billboard ranked Streisand as the greatest solo artist on the Billboard 200 chart, as well as the top Adult Contemporary female artist of all time. Her accolades span ten Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award; nine Golden Globe Awards; five Emmy Awards; four Peabody Awards; two Academy Awards; the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Streisand was born April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Diana Ida (née Rosen; 1908–2002) and Emanuel Streisand (1908–1943). Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary. Her father was a high school teacher at the same school, where they first met. Streisand's family is Jewish. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Galicia (modern-day Poland and Ukraine) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand's first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier. The family fell into near poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an "outcast", explaining, "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day. Mine didn't." Her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved: "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

Streisand recalled that her mother had a "great voice" and sang semi-professionally on occasion. In a 2016 interview with Rosie O'Donnell, Streisand recounted that when she was 13, she and her mother recorded some songs on tape during a visit to the Catskills. That session was the first time Streisand ever asserted herself as an artist, which also became her "first moment of inspiration."

She has an older brother, Sheldon, and a younger half-sister, singer Roslyn Kind, from her mother's remarriage to Louis Kind in 1950.