Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most successful personalities in show business. She is the only person ever to receive all of the following: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace, National Endowment for the Arts, and Peabody awards, as well as the American Film Institutes Lifetime Achievement honor and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Chaplin Award.

She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 to Diana (née Ida Rosen), a singer turned school secretary, and Emanuel Streisand, a high school teacher. Her father was of Galician (Polish) Jewish descent and her mother was of Russian Jewish ancestry. As a child she attended the Beis Yakov Jewish School in Brooklyn. She was raised in a middle-class family and grew up dreaming of becoming an actress (or even an actress / conductor, as she happily described her teenage years at one of her concerts).