Bette Midler (born December 1, 1945), and along with that has also received 13 Gold, 8 Platinum and 4 Multiplatinum albums by RIAA.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several Off-Off-Broadway plays prior to her engagements in
Fiddler on the Roof and
Salvation on Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse, where she managed to build up a core following. Since then, she has released 13 studio albums as a solo artist. Throughout her career, many of her songs became hits on the record charts, including "The Rose" and "Wind Beneath My Wings" as well as her renditions of "Do You Wanna Dance?", "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", and "From a Distance". In 2008, she signed a contract with Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to perform a series of shows titled
Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On, which ended in January 2010.
Midler made her motion picture debut in 1979 with
The Rose, which earned her a Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1980. In the following years she starred in a string of hit films that includes
Down and Out in Beverly Hills,
Outrageous Fortune,
Beaches,
The First Wives Club, and
The Stepford Wives, as well as
For the Boys and
Gypsy, the latter two of which she won two further Golden Globe Awards for in 1992 and 1994.