orig. Barbara Joan Streisand
born April 24, 1942, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.
U.S. singer and actress.
She sang in nightclubs before appearing on Broadway in I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962), and she became a major star with Funny Girl (1964; film and Academy Award, 1968). Her richly beautiful voice made her one of the world's most popular singers in the 1970s and '80s. An exuberant comic and dramatic actress, she starred in movies such as Hello, Dolly! (1969), What's Up Doc? (1972), The Way We Were (1973), and A Star Is Born (1976), and she later directed and starred in Yentl (1983) and The Prince of Tides (1991). She avoided live performances for several years, but in the 1990s she appeared in a series of concerts that broke box office sales records. In 1995 she received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.