Barbra Streisand

American singer, actress, and filmmaker. She began rising steadily upwards from 1961 by doing TV, records, Broadway, magazine covers and film. Recipient in 1995 of an Honorary Doctorate in Arts and Humanities from Brandeis University, Barbra Streisand is a rare honoree, perhaps the only artist to earn Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace and Peabody Awards. Her father, who passed away when Barbra was 15 months old, was a highly respected teacher and scholar. The second child in the family, she often remarked upon her childhood as being unhappy. When her mom remarried, she had conflicts with her step-dad, who verbally abused and denigrated her. An honor student at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, she consistently ranked in the top 10% of her class but was not popular with her peers and was given cruel nicknames. The teenager plunged, unassisted and without encouragement, into show business by winning a singing contest at a small Manhattan club. She developed a devout and growing following at the clubs which began hiring her, and soon she was attracting music industry attention at such spots as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel. In a Broadway musical, "I Can Get It for You Wholesale," 1962, she won the New York Drama Critics Award and received a Tony nomination. She also met and fell in love with Elliot Gould; they were married the following year and their son, Jason Emmanuel, was born on 12/26/1966. She and Gould announced their separation in 1968. Streisand’s career has been highlighted by a series of "firsts." Her first album, "The Barbra Streisand Album," 1963, became one of the most successful debut albums in history, winning two Grammy's. It was Album of the Year and she was the youngest artist to have won that, at that time. The following year she did "Funny Girl" on Broadway, followed by a film version for which she won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actress, the first of two Oscars. Her film hits continued with "Hello Dolly," 1969, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," 1970 and "The Way We Were," 1973. She starred in and produced "A Star is Born" in 1976. "The Prince of Tides" was the first motion picture directed by its female star ever to receive a Best Director nomination from the Directors Guild of America as well as seven Academy Award nominations. With "Yentl," which took 14 years of development and persistence, she became the first woman ever to produce, direct, write and star in a major motion picture. She was honored with an Emmy Award and the distinguished Peabody Award for her first television special, "My Name Is Barbra," in 1965. The program earned a total of five Emmys. This achievement was repeated 30 years later by her most recent musical production on television, "Barbra Streisand: The Concert," with two additional Emmy awards for Ms. Streisand among the five for the production itself. For her song "Evergreen," the love theme from her hit film, "A Star Is Born," Streisand is the first female composer ever to win an Academy Award. She was nominated again in 1997 as co-composer of "I Finally Found Someone," based on her love theme for her most recent film as director-producer-star, "The Mirror Has Two Faces." Streisand has repeatedly been at the top of the record sales charts. Her most recent Columbia Records album, "A Love Like Ours," was quickly certified as gold and then platinum. Her prior "Higher Ground" and earlier "Back To Broadway" albums are among only a handful of recordings ever to become Number One on the sales charts in their initial week of release and to go Platinum through their first shipping orders. The previous "The Broadway Album" similarly enjoyed great praise and sales, became No.1 and brought her three Grammy nominations and her eighth Grammy for Best Female Vocalist. "Higher Ground" occasioned two additional Grammy nominations for her. At home in pop, show tunes, rock and ballads; she even made a classical album, titled "Classical Barbra," which was nominated for a Grammy Award in the classical division. The dual album "Barbra Streisand: The Concert" was another recent effort in her parade of hits. She had achieved sales unequaled by any other female recording artist. With forty-two gold albums, she is second in the all-time charts, ahead of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, exceeded only by Elvis. Not only have forty-two of her albums become gold, but twenty-six have reached platinum status and the Recording Industry Association of America recently noted that she is the only female artist ever to have achieved thirteen multi-platinum albums, (including the soundtrack for her motion picture "A Star Is Born"), earning her eight Grammy Awards in the process. Streisand's Millennium New Year's Eve concert, "Timeless," at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, 12/31/1999, set an all-time Ticket Master record for one day sales of a single event, virtually selling out in the first few hours of sale eight months before the performance. A consummate entertainer and perfectionist, many people were surprised when she said that she had lost her zest for performing. On 12/31/1993 she gave her first paid concert in 22 years in Las Vegas, NV. Her second paid concert in as many years came the next day, it is reported that she was paid millions. In December 1993, Streisand donated her 15-acre Malibu showplace home, valued at $15 million, to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as a center for ecological studies. She is a leading spokesperson and fund-raiser for social causes close to her heart, including AIDS and for her on-going defense of constitutional rights. She had an off-screen romance with Don Johnson in 1984, after which she obtained a new look and a new love with Jon Peters, who produced "Prince of Tides," 1991. Her high-profile romances included Andre Agassi in 1993. In September 1996 she unveiled a romance with fellow director-actor, James Brolin (born July 18, 1940), whom she first met 7/01/1996. They became engaged in April 1997 and married on 7/1/1998. Barbra Streisand writes of herself, "I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven." In the autumn of 2005, Streisand and Barry Gibb reunited to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their successful joint venture, album "Guilty." The new CD is called "Guilty Pleasures." Link to Wikipedia biography