Peter Gene Hernandez (born October 8, 1985), known professionally as Bruno Mars, is an American singer-songwriter and record producer. Regarded as a pop icon, he is known for his three-octave tenor vocal range, live performances, retro showmanship, and musical versatility. He is accompanied by his band, the Hooligans. Raised in Honolulu, Mars gained recognition in Hawaii as a child for his impersonation of Elvis Presley, before moving to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a musical career.

Mars established his name in the music industry as a songwriter and co-founder of the production team the Smeezingtons. He rose to fame as a recording artist after featuring on the US number-one single "Nothin' on You" (2009) by B.o.B. Mars's first three studio albums—Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010), Unorthodox Jukebox (2012), and 24K Magic (2016)—found critical and commercial success, with the lattermost winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The albums spawned multiple international hit singles, including "Just the Way You Are", "Grenade", "The Lazy Song", "Locked Out of Heaven", "When I Was Your Man", "Treasure", "24K Magic", "That's What I Like", and "Finesse". He also featured on Mark Ronson's 2014 single "Uptown Funk", which became Billboard's best-performing song of the 2010s.

Mars's success continued throughout the 2020s. In 2021, he formed the musical superduo Silk Sonic with Anderson .Paak, and they released the 1970s R&B-inspired album An Evening with Silk Sonic, which contained the US number-one single "Leave the Door Open". Mars's 2024 chart-topping duets "Die with a Smile" with Lady Gaga and "Apt." with Rosé spent a total of 30 weeks atop the Billboard Global 200.

Mars has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has nine Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles and his 24K Magic World Tour (2017–2018) ranks among the highest-grossing tours in history. Mars's accolades include 16 Grammy Awards, 14 American Music Awards, 4 Brit Awards, 14 Soul Train Awards, and 8 Guinness World Records. He has been featured on Music Week's best-songwriters (2011) and Billboard's Greatest of All Time Artists (2019), as well as the Time 100 and Forbes Celebrity 100 lists. Mars was the first artist with six RIAA diamond-certified songs and the first artist to surpass 150 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Peter Gene Hernandez was born on October 8, 1985, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Peter Hernandez and Bernadette San Pedro Bayot. He was raised in the Waikiki neighborhood of Honolulu. His father, originally from Brooklyn, New York, is of Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish descent, with ancestral roots in Hungary and Ukraine. His mother emigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii and was of Filipino and Spanish ancestry. Hernandez's parents met while performing in a show—his mother as a hula dancer and his father as a percussionist. At the age of two, he was nicknamed "Bruno" by his father, who thought he resembled professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino.

Mars is one of six children and came from a musical family who exposed him to a diverse mix of musical genres, including rock and roll, reggae, hip hop, and rhythm and blues. His mother was a singer and a dancer and his father performed Little Richard's music, which inspired him as a young child. His uncle, an Elvis impersonator, encouraged the three-year-old Mars to perform songs by Presley and Michael Jackson. Mars began performing five days a week with his family's band (the Love Notes) at age four, including at the Sheraton Waikiki, and became known in Hawaii for his onstage impersonation of Elvis Presley. At one point, he urinated on himself during a performance of Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" when he was five; his parents thought they might be making a mistake, but he never wavered. Mars appeared in the Hawaiian tabloid shopper MidWeek as "Little Elvis" in 1990, and performed in the halftime show of the 1990 Aloha Bowl.

He had a cameo role in the 1992 film Honeymoon in Vegas, and was interviewed by Pauly Shore on MTV. When Mars was six years old, he appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show. He performed two shows a night throughout grade school with his family's band, covering Frankie Lymon and Little Anthony songs. The young Mars had a small drum set, guitar, piano and percussion instruments, and learned to play them. His parents divorced when he was 12 (ending the Love Notes), and his father's varied businesses failed. Mars, his brother and father lived in the "slums of Hawaii" in a car, on rooftops, and in a closed bird zoo (Paradise Park) where his father had worked. Mars changed schools and was bullied, but later became popular.

His Elvis impersonations had a major impact on his musical evolution and performing technique. Mars began playing guitar, inspired by American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. In 2010, he acknowledged his Hawaii-raised roots and musical family as an influence: "Growing up in Hawaii made me the man I am. I used to do a lot of shows in Hawaii with my father's band. Everybody in my family sings, everyone plays instruments ... I've just been surrounded by it." At President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, Mars sang in a group (the School Boys) who opened for his father's new band with songs by the Isley Brothers and the Temptations. He became well known in local Hawaii entertainment in high school, opening for a large magic show and impersonating Michael Jackson for $75 per performance.