Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter and actress.

Known for reinventing her image and showcasing versatility in entertainment, she started performing as a teenager by singing at open mic nights and acting in school plays.

She studied Collaborative Arts Project 21 before leaving to pursue a music career.

After a contract cancellation by Def Jam Recordings, Gaga worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, to an upper middle class Catholic family.

Both of her parents have Italian ancestry.

Her parents are Cynthia Louise, a philanthropist and business executive, and Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta, and she has a younger sister named Natali.

Brought up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gaga said in an interview that her parents came from lower-class families and worked hard for everything.

From age 11, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school.

Gaga has described her high-school self as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure".

She considered herself a misfit and was mocked for "being either too provocative or too eccentric".

Gaga began playing the piano at age four when her mother insisted she become "a cultured young woman".

She took piano lessons and practiced through her childhood.

The lessons taught her to create music by ear, which Gaga preferred over reading sheet music.

Her parents encouraged her to pursue music and enrolled her in Creative Arts Camp.

As a teenager, she played at open mic nights.

Gaga played the lead roles of Adelaide in the play Guys and Dolls and Philia in the play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Regis High School.

She also studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years.

Gaga unsuccessfully auditioned for New York shows, though did appear in a small background role as a high-school student in a 2001 episode of The Sopranos titled "The Telltale Moozadell".

She later said of her inclination towards music:

"I don't know exactly where my affinity for music comes from, but it is the thing that comes easiest to me. When I was like three years old, I may have been even younger, my mom always tells this really embarrassing story of me propping myself up and playing the keys like this because I was too young and short to get all the way up there. Just go like this on the low end of the piano ... I was really, really good at piano, so my first instincts were to work so hard at practicing piano, and I might not have been a natural dancer, but I am a natural musician. That is the thing that I believe I am the greatest at."

In 2003, at age 17, Gaga gained early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21, a music school at New York University (NYU)'s Tisch School of the Arts, and lived in an NYU dorm.

She studied music there and improved her songwriting skills by writing essays on art, religion, social issues and politics, including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst.

In 2007, she signed with Interscope Records and KonLive Distribution.

Her breakthrough came the following year with her debut studio album, The Fame, and its singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face".

The album was later reissued along with The Fame Monster (2009), which yielded the successful singles "Bad Romance", "Alejandro" and "Telephone".

Gaga's five succeeding albums all debuted atop the US Billboard 200.

Her accolades include 13 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, 18 MTV Video Music Awards, awards from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and recognition as Billboard Artist of the Year (2010) and Woman of the Year (2015).

Time named Gaga one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010 and 2019 and placed her on their All-Time 100 Fashion Icons list.

Gaga's philanthropy and activism focus on mental health awareness and LGBT rights; she has her own non-profit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which supports the wellness of young people.

Her second full-length album, Born This Way (2011), explored electronic rock and techno-pop and sold more than one million copies in its first week.

The title track became the fastest-selling song on the iTunes Store, with over one million downloads in less than a week.

She has also been included in several Forbes power rankings and ranked fourth on VH1's Greatest Women in Music (2012).

Following her EDM-influenced third album, Artpop (2013), and its lead single "Applause", she released the jazz album Cheek to Cheek (2014) with Tony Bennett, and the soft rock album Joanne (2016).

She ventured into acting, winning awards for her leading roles in the miniseries American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016) and the musical film A Star Is Born (2018).

Her contributions to the latter's soundtrack, which spawned the chart-topping single "Shallow", made her the first woman to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and Grammy Award in one year.

Her business ventures include Haus Labs, a vegan cosmetics brand launched in 2019.

Gaga returned to dance-pop with her sixth studio album, Chromatica (2020), which yielded the number-one single "Rain on Me".

She both released her second and final collaborative album with Bennett, Love for Sale, and starred in the biopic House of Gucci in 2021.

Having sold an estimated 170million records, Gaga is one of the world's best-selling music artists and the only female artist to achieve four singles each selling at least 10million copies globally.