Barbra Streisand is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold 150 records worldwide. · She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York, where she was classmates with Neil Diamond and chess champion Bobby Fischer. · Named Barbara Joan Streisand at birth, at age 18 she changed the spelling of her first name “to be unique.” · She has won 2 Academy Awards, 8 Grammy Awards (including the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), 5 Emmy Awards, and 4 Peabody Awards. · Her 1963 debut, The Barbra Streisand Album, won Grammy Awards for Best Female Vocal Performance and Album of the Year. · Billboard named her All-Time Queen of the Billboard 200 in recognition of her 34 Top 10 albums—the most for a solo female artist. · She made her film debut and won the Best Actress Oscar for the adaptation of her Broadway hit Funny Girl. · The first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture, she won two Academy Awards for her 1983 film Yentl. · The Barbra Streisand Foundation, which she started in 1986, has distributed more than $25 million to support environmental protection, civil liberties, and AIDS research. · She has been awarded the National Medal of Freedom, the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.