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It's hard to find an entertainer as celebrated as Barbra Streisand. She is one of very few people to hold an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, and one of only two to hold all of those and a Peabody. She's one of the all-time top selling recording artists with nearly seventy million album sales in the US alone, and one hundred fifty million worldwide. She holds the world record for number one albums for women, with eleven top sellers. She's the only artist to have a top selling record for six decades straight. She's released fourteen multi-platinum and fifty-three gold records. She's the only woman to ever win a Golden Globe for best director and the first woman to receive an Academy Award as a composer. She even has a sociological phenomena named after her, "The Streisand Effect." We could go on and on, but you probably get the point. If ever there was such a thing as entertainment royalty, Streisand is it.

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"I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good."

A Star Is Born

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"I was kind of a wild child. I wasn't taught the niceties of life." Born on April 24, 1942 in Brooklyn, Barbra's mother, Diana Streisand, had spent her youth as a soprano singer, ultimately deciding to work as a school secretary rather than pursuing a career in music. Here she would meet Barbra's father, Emanual Streisand, a teacher at the same school. Barbra unfortunately lost her father at a young age, and her mother would have to work as much as possible to keep the lights on. Although Barbra did not get as much attention as she craved as a child, she cherishes the fond memories that she has with her mother, such as recording songs together on a tape recorder when Barbra was thirteen years old. She would spend her days singing on the stoop of their building, already a local celebrity at a young age, drawing neighbor kids to listen, and developing a reputation as the "girl on the block with the good voice." She especially enjoyed the acoustics of the hallways in her apartment building, listening to her voice echoing down the corridors.

Streisand would first take to the stage at a PTA assembly, which would win her the opportunity to sing at weddings and at her childhood summer camp. She would even have an audition at MGM records at just nine years old. She wouldn't win a contract, but already she had a foot in the door. Although she had a knack for it, you may be surprised to learn that Barbra never developed a taste for live performance. "I don't enjoy public performances and being up on a stage. I don't enjoy the glamour. Like tonight, I am up on stage and my feet hurt."

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Ultimately the young singer hoped to become an actress. She went to see a Broadway production The Diary of Anne Frank at fourteen years old, and found her idol in the young Susan Strasberg. While attending Erasmus Hall High School she would be a model student, getting on the honor roll in modern history and in English and Spanish, but she would still find time to study her craft, spending hours at the library reading Shakespeare and Ibsen, and studying the biographies of stage actresses like Sarah Bernhardt in hopes of emulating their strategies in her own career. She would also join the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, where she befriended fellow student Neil Diamond.

"You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it."

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Graduating at sixteen, Streisand immediately moved out on her own, renting her own apartment in the theater district and taking a string of jobs, doing anything she could that would allow her to be near the stage. Unfortunately, despite her incredible voice, she still looked like a sixteen year old kid, and would generally strike out at every casting call.

"As a young woman, I wanted nothing more than to see my name in lights."

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After being told by one director that she should consider leaning more on her talent as a singer, she finally conceded, recording a demo tape and entering talent shows, winning a contest to thunderous applause at The Lion in Greenwich Village. She would start to be booked in nightclubs and decided it was time to give herself a stagename, dropping the second A from her first name to become Barbra Streisand. "I don't care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong."

Broadway And Beyond

Already blowing up the New York nightclub scene, Streisand decided it was time to take another shot at acting, and found her way to the stage in the comedy play Another Evening with Harry Stoones. The show was... not a hit. But not to be dissuaded, she kept at it, landing a role in I Can Get It For You Wholesale, co-starring with soon-to-be husband Elliot Gould. She would soon start to make the rounds as an up-and-coming Broadway star, appearing alongside Groucho Marx on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, becoming a regular on Bob Hope specials and winning high-profile fans like Liberace. By 1963 it was time for her to make it official and record her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album (1963), hitting number ten on the Billboard chart and winning three Grammies.

Streisand instantly became entertainment royalty. Anything she wanted to do in the industry, she could do it. When she wanted to make a movie, she went ahead and made a movie, starring in Funny Girl (1968) based on her Broadway show. If she wanted to direct a film, who was to stop her from making Yentl (1983) based on her short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" and then The Prince of Tides (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)? And she's never slowed down, continuing to release albums on an almost-yearly basis, and starring in at least one era-defining film every decade, most recently co-starring in road trip comedy The Guilt Trip (2012) as Seth Rogen's mother.

While the second half of a star's career usually contains some period of drama, some career slump or a string of failed albums, since Streisand's Broadway debut she has never been anything less than one of the biggest and most influential stars in the world.

"Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth."