Barbra Streisand is an Oscar-winning, Tony-winning, Emmy-winning, Golden Globe-winning Broadway legend, film star, movie director, and one of the biggest-selling recording artists of all time - a staggering amount of accomplishments for someone whose mother insisted she not to go into show business.

By the time she was sixteen, she’d graduated high school and was living on her own in Manhattan. After winning a talent contest at a gay bar on West 9th Street, Streisand’s ‘spellbinding’ voice quickly became popular at New York clubs and in Broadway shows. After appearances on a number of popular television shows including The Tonight Show, Streisand signed with Columbia Records and released several top 10 albums in the 1960s, scoring two US top 40 hits with “People” and “Second Hand Rose”.

Her success as a recording artist continued through the 1970s with several more gold/platinum-certified albums and four US chart-toppers: “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, “No More Tears”, the Oscar-winning “The Way We Were”, and the Academy Award-winning “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)”. The 1980s would begin with Streisand’s biggest-selling release of her career Guilty, a collaborative effort with BeeGees member Barry Gibb. It topped the album’s chart in several countries, as did its lead single “Woman In Love”.

For the rest of the 80s and into the 90s, Streisand continued adding to her already diverse collection of releases including pop songs, Broadway standards, and successful films like Yentl, The Prince of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces – the latter featuring the 1996 duet “I Finally Found Someone” with Bryan Adams that remains her last top 10 US hit (and appearance on the Hot 100).

Despite their lack of mainstream hits, Streisand has continued success on the album’s chart in the 2000s with three more chart-toppers. At over 60 million albums sold in the US, she remains one of the biggest-selling recording artists of all time. Streisand also continues to sell out concert halls with her performances, receive various awards for her contributions to music and film, and be recognized for her support of various social and humanitarian causes.