Barbara Streisand

Barbra Streisand (born Barbara Joan Streisand, April 24, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, filmmaker and actress. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, and a Peabody Award.

She is one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern entertainment history and one of the best-selling solo recording artists with more than 71 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list and the only female recording artist in the top ten. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, Jamie Foxx and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an Oscar for a leading role and also recording on a #1 pop single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

According to the RIAA, Streisand holds the record for the most Top 10 albums of any female recording artist; a total of 31 to her credit since 1963. Streisand also has the widest span (46 years) between first and latest Top 10 albums of any female recording artist. With her 2009 album, Love Is the Answer, she became the only artist to achieve number 1 albums in five consecutive decades. Her RIAA tally shows she has released 51 Gold albums, 30 Platinum albums, and 13 Multi-Platinum albums in the United States.

Streisand was born to a Jewish family, Emmanuel and Diana (née Rosen), on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the second of two children. Fifteen months later, Emmanuel died of a cerebral hemorrhage and the family went into near-poverty. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. Soon Streisand became a nightclub singer while in her teens. She originally wanted to be an actress and appeared in summer stock and in a number of Off-Off-Broadway productions, including Driftwood (1959), with the then-unknown Joan Rivers. (In her autobiography, Rivers wrote that she played a lesbian with a crush on Barbra's character, but this was later refuted by the play's author.) Driftwood ran for only six weeks. When her boyfriend, Barry Dennen, helped her create a club act—first performed in The Lion, a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1960—she achieved success as a singer. One early appearance outside of New York City was at Enrico Banducci’s hungry i nightclub in San Francisco. In 1961, Streisand appeared at the Town and Country nightclub in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, but her appearance was cut short; audiences did not understand her revolutionary singing style.

In 1962, after several appearances on PM East/PM West, Streisand first appeared on Broadway, in the small but star-making role of Miss Marmelstein in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. Her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, won two Grammy Awards in 1963. Following her success in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Streisand made several appearances on The Tonight Show in 1962. Topics covered in her interviews with host Johnny Carson included the empire-waisted dresses that she bought wholesale, to her “crazy” reputation at Erasmus Hall High School, soon enough she got engaged.

Streisand has recorded 35 studio albums, almost all with the Columbia Records label. Her early works in the 1960s are considered classic renditions of theater and cabaret standards, including her slow version of the normally uptempo Happy Days Are Here Again. She performed this in a duet on The Judy Garland Show. Garland referred to her on the air as one of the last great belters. They also sang There's No Business Like Show Business with Ethel Merman joining them.

Beginning with My Name Is Barbra, her early albums were often medley-filled keepsakes of her television specials. Starting in 1969, she began attempting more contemporary material, but like many talented singers of the day, she found herself out of her element with rock. Her vocal talents prevailed, and she gained newfound success with the pop and ballad-oriented Richard Perry-produced album Stoney End in 1971. The title track, written by Laura Nyro, was a major hit for Streisand.

As the 1970s ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the U.S.—only Elvis Presley and The Beatles had sold more albums. In 1980, she released her best-selling effort to date, the Barry Gibb-produced Guilty. The album contained the hits Woman In Love (which spent several weeks atop the pop charts in the Fall of 1980), Guilty, and What Kind of Fool.

After years of largely ignoring Broadway and traditional pop music in favor of more contemporary material, Streisand returned to her musical-theater roots with 1985's The Broadway Album, which was unexpectedly successful, holding the coveted #1 Billboard position for three straight weeks, and being certified quadruple Platinum. The album featured tunes by Rodgers & Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Stephen Sondheim, who was persuaded to rework some of his songs especially for this recording. The Broadway Album was met with acclaim, including a nomination for Album of the Year and, ultimately, handed Streisand her eighth Grammy as Best Female Vocalist. After releasing the live album One Voice in 1986, Streisand was set to take another musical journey along the Great White Way in 1988. She recorded several cuts for the album under the direction of Rupert Holmes, including On My Own (from Les Misérables), a medley of How Are Things in Glocca Morra? and Heather on the Hill (from Finian's Rainbow and Brigadoon, respectively), All I Ask of You (from Phantom of the Opera), Warm All Over (from The Most Happy Fella) and an unusual solo version of Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide). Streisand was not happy with the direction of the project and it was ultimately scrapped. Only Warm All Over and a reworked, Lite FM-friendly version of All I Ask of You were ever released—the latter appearing on Streisand's 1988 effort, Till I Loved You.

In September 1993, Streisand announced her first public concert appearances in 27 years. What began as a two-night New Year's event at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas eventually led to a multi-city tour in the summer of 1994. Tickets to the tour were sold out in under one hour. Streisand also appeared on the covers of major magazines in anticipation of what Time magazine named "The Music Event of the Century". The tour was one of the biggest all-media merchandise parlays in history. Ticket prices ranged from US$50 to US$1,500 - making Streisand the highest paid concert performer in history. Barbra Streisand: The Concert went on to be the top grossing concert of the year, earned five Emmy Awards and the Peabody Award, and the taped broadcast on HBO is, to date, the highest rated concert special in HBO's 30 year history.

On New Year's Eve 1999, Streisand returned to the concert stage, giving the highest grossing single concert in Las Vegas history to date.^{[citation needed]} At the end of the millennium, she was the number one female singer in the U.S., with at least two #1 albums in each decade since she began performing. A 2-disc live album of the concert entitled Timeless: Live in Concert was released in 2000. Streisand performed versions of the "Timeless" concert in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia in early 2000.

In advance of four concerts (two each in Los Angeles and New York) in September 2000, Streisand announced she was retiring from future paying public concerts. Her performance of the song People was broadcast on the Internet via America Online.

Streisand's most recent albums have been Christmas Memories (2001), a somewhat somber collection of holiday songs (which felt entirely—albeit unintentionally—appropriate in the early post-9/11 days), and The Movie Album (2003), featuring famous movie themes and backed by a large symphony orchestra. Guilty Pleasures (called Guilty Too in the UK), a collaboration with Barry Gibb and a sequel to their previous Guilty, was released worldwide in 2005.

Streisand's 20-concert tour set record box-office numbers. At the age of 64, well past the prime of most performers, she grossed US$92,457,062 and set house gross records in 14 of the 16 arenas played on the tour. She set the third-place record for her October 9, 2006 show at Madison Square Garden, the first- and second-place records of which are held by her two shows in September 2000. She set the second-place record at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, with her December 31, 1999 show being the house record and the highest grossing concert of all time. This led many people to openly criticize Streisand for price gouging, as many tickets sold for upwards of US$1,000.

A collection of performances culled from different stops on this tour, Live in Concert 2006, debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200, making it Streisand's 29th Top 10 album. In the summer of 2007, Streisand gave concerts for the first time in continental Europe. Tickets for the London dates cost between £100.00 and GB£1,500.00 and for the Ireland date between €118 and €500. The tour included a 58-piece orchestra.

In February 2008, Forbes Magazine listed Streisand as the #2 top-earning female musician, between June 2006 and June 2007, with earnings of about US$60 million. Although Streisand's range has changed with time and her voice has become deeper over the years, her vocal prowess has remained remarkably secure for a singer whose career has endured for nearly half a century.

On February 1, 2010, Streisand joined over 80 other artists in recording a new version of the 1985 charity single "We Are the World". Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie planned to release the new version to mark the 25th anniversary of its original recording. These plans changed, however, in view of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, and on February 12, the song, now called "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", made its debut as a charity single to support relief aid for the beleaguered island nation.Streisand, like fellow divas Bette Midler and Celine Dion, was offered a $100 Million contract to perform in Las Vegas. Under the contract, Barbra would have been slated to perform for 3 years. She turned them down, while an insider said she has plans to tour in the Summer 2010.

Her first film was a reprise of her Broadway hit, Funny Girl (1968), an artistic and commercial success directed by Hollywood veteran William Wyler, for which she won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actress, sharing it with Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter), the first (and only) time there was a tie in this Oscar category. Her next two movies were also based on musicals, Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! directed by Gene Kelly (1969) and Alan Jay Lerner's and Burton Lane's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever directed by Vincente Minnelli (1970), while her fourth film was based on the Broadway play The Owl and the Pussycat (1970).

During the 1970s, Streisand starred in several screwball comedies, including What's Up, Doc? (1972) and The Main Event (1979), both co-starring Ryan O'Neal, and For Pete's Sake (1974) with Michael Sarrazin. One of her most famous roles during this period was in the drama The Way We Were (1973) with Robert Redford, for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She earned her second Academy Award for Best Original Song as composer (together with lyricist Paul Williams) for the song "Evergreen", from A Star Is Born in 1976; this was the first time a woman had received this award.

Along with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, Streisand formed First Artists Production Company in 1969 so the actors could secure properties and develop movie projects for themselves. Streisand's initial outing with First Artists was Up the Sandbox (1972).

In 2004, Streisand made a return to film acting, after an eight-year hiatus, in the comedy Meet the Fockers (a sequel to Meet the Parents), playing opposite Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Blythe Danner and Robert De Niro.

Streisand has long been an active supporter of the Democratic Party and many of their causes. Streisand said, "The Democrats have always been the party of working people and minorities. I've always identified with the minorities." Streisand has personally raised $15 million for organizations through her live performances. The Streisand Foundation, established in 1986, has contributed over $16 million through its grants to "national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues and nuclear disarmament." In 2006, Streisand donated $1 million to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation in support of President Bill Clinton’s climate change initiative.

In 2000, Barbra Streisand was awarded the National Medal of Arts and she has been nominated for over 56 Grammy Awards, of which she won 15. She's been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame three times.

Barbra Joan Streisand (Brooklyn, New York, USA, 1942.) amerikai színésznő, énekesnő, zeneszerző, rendező, forgatókönyvíró, producer.
New Yorkban, Brooklynban született ortodox zsidó családban. Édesapja korán meghalt, és Barbra-nak nagyon hiányzott édesapja. Ez adott indíttatást első rendezéséhez (Yentl). Anyja nem nézte jó szemmel lánya színészi álmait, és folyton becsmérelte Barbra külsejét. Sidney Poitier-vel és Paul Newmannal az első sztárok között volt az 1970-es években, akik saját produkciós irodát alapítottak.

Szerepeiben főként akaratos, elszánt asszonyokat alakít, drámai és komikus szerepek megformálásában egyaránt élen jár. A legtehetségesebb amerikai énekesnők egyike.

1997-ben eljegyezte magát a másodvonalbeli filmek sztárjával, James Brolin-nal, akivel kapcsolatban nem titkolja, hogy a hiányzó apafigurát is pótolja számára. Egyetlen vágya, hogy partnerével a lehető legtöbb időt töltse együtt.

Hollywood leggazdagabb üzletasszonyai közé tartozik, egyes becslések szerint 180 millió dolláros vagyonnal rendelkezik.

Rendszerint együtt ünnepli születésnapját barátnőjével, Shirley MacLaine-nel, akivel egy napon született. Közeli barátnője Donna Karan, divattervező. Elliot Gouldhoz fűződő kapcsolatából született egy fia, Jason, akiről azt állítják, hogy homoszexuális. Állandó munkatársa koncertjei karmestere és filmjei zeneszerzője, Marvin Hamlisch.