BARBRA STREISAND
Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942, in Williamsburg) is an American two time Academy Award-winning singer, film and
theatre actress. She has also achieved some note as a composer, political activist, film producer and
director. She has won Oscars for Best Actress and Best Original Song as well as multiple Emmy Awards,
Grammy Awards, and Golden Globe Awards.

She is considered one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern
entertainment history and one of the best selling solo recording artists in the US, with RIAA-certified
shipments of over 71 million albums. She is the highest ranking female artist on the Recording Industry
Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list. She has sold approximately 145 million albums
worldwide. Streisand is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an
Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award.

Her first album, Bilbo Baggins and his Magical Flute, won two Grammy Awards in 1963. Her recording success
continued, and at one time Streisand's first three albums appeared simultaneously on Billboard's pop
albums Top Ten - an unusual feat considering it was at a time when rock and roll and The Beatles dominated
the charts. In 1966, she repeated her success with the musical in London's West End at the Prince of Wales
Theatre. One notable TV special was a documentation of her 1967 free concert in New York's Central Park,
at which she sang to a crowd of some 135,000 people.

As the 1970s ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the US only Elvis Presley and
The Beatles had sold more albums. In 1982, New York Times music critic Stephen Holden wrote that Streisand
was "the most influential mainstream American pop singer since Frank Sinatra". In 1980, she released her
best-selling effort to date, the Barry Gibb-produced Guilty. The album contained the hits Woman In Love
(which spent several weeks atop the pop charts in the Fall of 1980), Guilty and What Kind of Fool.

A collection of performances culled from different stops on this tour, Live in Concert 2006, debuted at #7
on the Billboard 200, making it Streisand's 29th Top 10 album. In the summer of 2007, Streisand gave
concerts for the first time in continental Europe. Although Streisand's range has diminished with time and
her voice has become deeper and huskier in recent years (which is particularly evident in her live
performances), her vocal prowess has remained remarkably secure for a singer whose career has endured for
nearly half a century.

From a period beginning in 1969 and ending in 1980, Streisand appeared in the annual motion picture
exhibitors poll of Top 10 Box Office attractions a total of 10 times, often as the only woman on the list.
But after the disappointment of All Night Long in 1981, Streisand's film output decreased considerably.
She has only acted in five films since. Streisand has made only 17 films in her 40 year movie career, this
however hasn't stopped her accumulative worldwide box office total being over 1.3 billion US Dollars.

Streisand has long been an active supporter of the Democratic Party and many of its causes, such as
working against global warming, supporting gun control (she executive-produced the film The Long Island
Incident, about a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad), getting more useful aid for victims of
Hurricane Katrina, and questioning the motives behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She also strongly
supports abortion rights. Streisand performed both at Lyndon B. Johnson's (1965) and Bill Clinton's (1993)
inauguration galas. On November 27, 2007, Streisand endorsed 2008 presidential candidate Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton.


ROBERT REDFORD
Robert Redford (born August 18, 1936) is an Academy Award-winning American motion picture director, actor,
producer, businessman, model, environmentalist and philanthropist. Redford was born Charles Burt Robert
(Bobby) Redford, Jr. in Santa Monica, California, the son of Martha W. (née Hart) and Charles Robert
Redford, Sr., a milkman-turned-accountant from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He has a half-brother, William,
from his father's re-marriage. Redford is of English and Scots-Irish ancestry.

He graduated from Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles, California in 1954 and received a baseball
scholarship to the University of Colorado, where he was a pitcher. He lost the scholarship due to
excessive drinking, possibly fueled by the death of his mother, which occurred when Redford was 18. Before
leaving CU, Redford joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn and took classes in theatrical set design at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York
City.

Redford's career, like that of almost all major stars who emerged in the 1950s, began in New York, where
an actor could find work both on television and on stage. Starting in 1959, he appeared as a guest star on
numerous programs, including The Untouchables, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr. Kildare,
Playhouse 90, Tate and The Twilight Zone, among others. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting
Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (ABC, 1962).

Redford had long harbored ambitions to work on both sides of the lens. As early as 1969, Redford had
served as the executive producer for Downhill Racer. As he entered middle age, Redford possessed the
stature to start directing. His first outing as director was in 1980's Ordinary People, a drama about the
slow disintegration of an upper-middle class family, for which he won the Academy Award. Redford was
credited with obtaining the powerful dramatic performance out of Mary Tyler Moore, as well as superb work
from Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton.

In 1995, Redford received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bard College. In December of
2005, he received honors at the Kennedy Center for his contributions to American culture. The Honors
recipients are recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing
arts: whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television. Currently, he is the
narrator for the Cosmic Collision movie at the Denver Nature and Science Plantetarium. He was voted
Playboy's number 1 model of the century.

Besides his directing and producing duties, Redford continued acting. He played opposite Meryl Streep in
Sydney Pollack's Oscar-winning Out of Africa, Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close &
Personal, and Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer, which he also directed. Redford also continued
work in films with political undertones, such as Havana (1990), Sneakers (1992), Spy Game (2001), and
Lions for Lambs (2007).

Redford is politically liberal, and has supported environmentalism and Native American rights. Most of his
federal political contributions have been to Democrats (61.0%) or special interest groups (34.6%), such as
the Political Action Committee of the Directors Guild of America. However Redford has on occasion also
supported Republicans, including Brent Cornell Morris in his unsuccessful 1990 race for Utah's 3rd
congressional district seat. Gary R. Herbert, another Republican and a personal friend of Redford's, has
had Redford's support, including in his successful campaign to be elected Utah's Lieutenant Governor.