How Old Is Barbra Streisand?

The Short Answer

Barbra Streisand is 84 years old — born on April 24, 1942. That makes Barbra Streisand one of the most-searched public figures for age-related questions, with fans regularly looking up birthday and family details.

Barbra Streisand: Early Life and Background

Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( STRY-sand; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, author, and filmmaker. Over a career spanning more than six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, and has earned all four of the major performing art awards—Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT).

Streisand began performing in the early 1960s in nightclubs and Broadway theaters, which led to guest appearances on various television shows. Signing with Columbia Records, Streisand retained full artistic control of her performances in exchange for accepting lower pay—an arrangement that continued throughout her career. Her studio debut The Barbra Streisand Album (1963) won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. During her recording career, Streisand has amassed a total of 31 RIAA platinum-certified albums, including People (1964), The Way We Were (1974), Guilty (1980), The Broadway Album (1985), and Higher Ground (1997). She was the first woman to score 11 number one albums on the US Billboard 200—from People to Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway (2016)—and remains the only artist to top the chart in six decades. Streisand also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 with five singles: "The Way We Were", "Evergreen", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "Woman in Love".

In the latter 1960s, after having established success as a vocalist, Streisand ventured into film. She starred in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl (1968), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. Additional fame on the big screen followed with the extravagant musical Hello, Dolly! (1969), the screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), and the romantic drama The Way We Were (1973). Streisand won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for writing the love theme from A Star Is Born (1976), the first woman to be honored as a composer. With the release of Yentl (1983), Streisand became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical. Streisand also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, becoming the first (and for 37 years, the only) woman to win that award. Streisand then produced and directed The Prince of Tides (1991), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

With sales exceeding 150 million records worldwide, Streisand is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the third-highest certified female artist in the United States, with 68.5 million certified album units. Billboard ranked Streisand as the greatest solo artist on the Billboard 200 chart, as well as the top Adult Contemporary female artist of all time. Her accolades span ten Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award; nine Golden Globe Awards; five Emmy Awards; four Peabody Awards; two Academy Awards; the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award; the Honorary Palme d'Or; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Career and Rise to Fame

Early life

Streisand was born April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Diana Ida (née Rosen; 1908–2002) and Emanuel Streisand (1908–1943). Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary. Her father was a high school teacher at the same school, where they first met. Streisand's family is Jewish. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Galicia (modern-day Poland and Ukraine) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire, where her grandfather had been a cantor.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand's first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier. The family fell into near poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an "outcast", explaining, "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day. Mine didn't." Her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved: "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

Streisand recalled that her mother had a "great voice" and sang semi-professionally on occasion. In a 2016 interview with Rosie O'Donnell, Streisand recounted that when she was 13, she and her mother recorded some songs on tape during a visit to the Catskills. That session was the first time Streisand ever asserted herself as an artist, which also became her "first moment of inspiration."

Age and Birthday Details

Barbra Streisand was born on April 24, 1942.

As of 2026, Barbra Streisand is 84 years old.

Birthday milestones for public figures like Barbra Streisand routinely trend on social media, which is why "how old is" questions generate such consistent search demand.

Personal Life and Family

She has an older brother, Sheldon, and a younger half-sister, singer Roslyn Kind, from her mother's remarriage to Louis Kind in 1950.

Streisand began her education at the Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva of Brooklyn when she was five. She was considered bright and inquisitive; however, she lacked discipline, often shouting answers to questions out of turn. She next attended Public School 89 in Brooklyn, and during those early school years began watching television and going to movies. "I always wanted to be somebody, to be famous... You know, get out of Brooklyn."

Streisand became known by others in the neighborhood for her voice. She remembers sitting on the stoop in front of their apartment building with the other kids and singing: "I was considered the girl on the block with the good voice." That talent became a way for her to gain attention. She would often practice her singing in the hallway of her apartment building, which gave her voice an echoing quality.

She made her singing debut at a parent–teacher association assembly, where she became a hit to everyone but her mother, who was mostly critical of her daughter. Streisand was invited to sing at weddings and summer camp, along with having an unsuccessful audition at MGM records when she was nine. By the time she was 13, her mother began supporting her talent, helping her make a four-song demo tape, including "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" and "You'll Never Know".

Recent Years

Becoming an actress was her main objective. That desire was made stronger when she saw her first Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank, when she was 14. The star in the play was Susan Strasberg, whose acting she wanted to emulate. Streisand began spending her spare time in the library, studying the biographies of various stage actresses such as Eleanora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. In addition, she began reading novels and plays and studying the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov.

In 1956, she attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where she became an honor student in modern history, English, and Spanish. She also joined the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, where she sang with another choir member and classmate, Neil Diamond. Diamond recalls, "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." The school was near an art movie house, and he recalls that she was always aware of the films they were showing. She had a crush on 15-year-old US Chess Champion and fellow student Bobby Fischer, whom she found to be "very sexy".

During the summer of 1957, she landed her first stage experience as a walk-on at the Playhouse, in Malden Bridge, New York. That small part was followed by a role as the kid sister in Picnic and as a vamp in Desk Set. In her second year, she took a night job at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, helping backstage. When she was a senior, she rehearsed for a small part in Driftwood, a play staged in a midtown attic space.

She graduated from Erasmus Hall in January 1959 at age 16, and despite her mother's pleas that she stay out of show business, she set out trying to get roles on the New York City stage. After renting a small apartment on 48th Street in the heart of the theater district, she accepted any job she could involving the stage, and at every opportunity, she "made the rounds" of the casting offices.

Living on her own at 16, Streisand took various menial jobs to have some income. During one period, she lacked a permanent address, and found herself sleeping at the home of friends or anywhere else she could set up the army cot she carried around. When desperate, she returned to her mother's...

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