Barbra Streisand

Born: April 24 1942
Where: Brooklyn, New York, USA

The self-styled "actress who sings" stormed Hollywood when she landed a best actress Oscar for her 1968 big screen debut Funny Girl.

She went on to pick up a second Academy Award - this time for best song - for Evergreen from the movie A Star Is Born.

Streisand has also been Oscar nominated three times - for The Way We Were, The Prince of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces.

What makes her success all the more remarkable was her style went against the prevailing tide - rock'n'roll - yet she is still the world's biggest selling female singer.

As a child, she attended the Jewish school, Beis Yakov School in Brooklyn and counted Neil Diamond as one of her fellow choristers at New York's Erasmus high school.

After struggling briefly as an actress and nightclub singer in 60s New York, she landed her first Broadway role in I Can Get It for You Wholesale in 1962.

The subsequent cast album was her first recording and she went on to sign for Columbia Records, where she released her first disc in 1963.

The Barbra Streisand Album became a top yen, gold-selling record, turning Streisand into one of the best-selling recording artists of the time.

However, she switched track from a promising singing career to take the starring role in the Broadway show Funny Girl.

The show's song People became her first top ten single and the People album her first chart-topping LP.

My Name is Barbra in 1965 marked her TV debut and she made her feature debut by bringing Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice to the big screen in Funny Girl.

The performance - opposite Omar Sharif - gave Streisand her first Academy Award.

However, the Gene Kelly-directed follow-up Hello Dolly and sci-fi fantasy On A Clear Day You Can See Forever did not fare so well at the box office.

In 1970, she was back on firmer ground alongside George Segal in The Owl And The Pussycat but turned down the role of call girl Bree Daniels in Klute which won Jane Fonda an Oscar.

She was showing real form in her sex symbol period with the 1972 screwball comedy What's Up Do with Ryan O'Neal.

In the 1970s, Streisand successfully married her musical and film acting interests, first in The Way We Were and then with A Star Is Born.

Every album she released sold at least a million copies and she enjoyed collaborations with Neil Diamond (You Don't Bring Me Flowers) and Donna Summer (No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).

She had her biggest selling album in 1980 with Guilty, which was written and produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and contained number one Woman in Love.

In 1983, Streisand's first directorial effort, the musical Yentl, told the story of a Jewish girl who disguises herself as a boy for religious training.

She darkened the tone to play a call girl accused of murder in Nuts and took the director's chair (as well as starred in) the well received The Prince of Tides.

In 1996, she directed her third film, the comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces, in which she starred with Jeff Bridges and Lauren Bacall.

Streisand has one son, Jason Gould with ex-husband, Elliott Gould and is now married to actor James Brolin. Previous boyfriends included Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau.

After an eight-year break, she returned to the big screen to play a Ben Stiller's bohemian sex therapist mum in the comedy Meet The Fockers.