Singer, actress, producer, and director. Born Barbara Joan Streisand, on, New York. After graduating from high school in 1959, she moved to Manhattan to pursue an acting career. In the early 1960s, she sang in various New York nightclubs and landed a 1961 appearance on The Tonight Show. She made her Broadway debut in 1962 in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. Her success on Broadway led to a recording contract with Columbia Records; in 1963, the success of her self-titled debut album made her the top-selling female singer in America. Her breakthrough role on Broadway came in 1964, when she played Fanny Brice, the famous stage comedienne and singer, in Funny Girl, for which she received her second Tony nomination. Streisand won an Oscar for her big screen debut in the 1968 film version of Funny Girl.
Throughout the next three-plus decades, Streisand achieved superstardom as both an actress and a singer. During the 1960s, she released nine Top Ten albums, including the Grammy-winning My Name is Barbra (1966), Simply Streisand (1967), and What About Today? (1969). Although a good deal of her music was drawn from her performances in films or on Broadway, a 1971 rock & roll album, Stoney End, also won praise. Her phenomenal success as a recording artist only grew during the 1970s. She collaborated with Bee Gee Barry Gibb on 1977’s Streisand Superman and scored No. 1 hits with her duets with Neil Diamond (1978’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”) and Donna Summer (1979’s “Enough is Enough”). Albums she recorded in the 1980s included Memories (1981) and The Broadway Album (1985).

Her film career blossomed as well, boosted by her unconventional beauty and take-charge attitude. In 1969, she starred in the glitzy film version of the Broadway musical Hello Dolly!, in a role originated on stage by Carol Channing. With her newly-formed production company, Barwood Films, she produced and starred in 1972’s Up the Sandbox. Huge box office hits like What’s Up Doc? (1972) and The Way We Were (1973), co-starring Robert Redford, made Streisand the top-grossing female actress of the 1970s.