Full Name: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Lady Gaga) Profession: Singer, Songwriter, Actress, Performance Artist, Philanthropist, and Fashion Designer Nationality: American Born: March 28, 1986 Birthplace: Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA Generation: Millennial Chinese Zodiac: Fire Tiger Zodiac Sign: Aries Age in 2026: 40 Marital Status: Engaged (to entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael Polansky, engaged in 2024 after a relationship that began publicly in early 2020; their wedding as of early 2026 has not yet taken place) Children: None Description: Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986, in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, Lady Gaga is one of the most iconic, multi-talented, and culturally transformative entertainers of the 21st century, widely recognized as a defining force in global pop music, cinema, fashion, and social advocacy; she was raised in a Roman Catholic Italian-American household on the Upper West Side of Manhattan by her parents. Joseph Anthony Germanotta Jr., a successful internet entrepreneur, and Cynthia Louise (née Bissett), and showed extraordinary musical aptitude from a very early age, teaching herself to play piano by ear at age four and composing her first piano ballad at age thirteen; she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an elite all-girls private school on the Upper East Side, and later enrolled in the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21) music theatre conservatory at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004, becoming one of only twenty students in the world accepted early to the program at age seventeen, though she ultimately left NYU to pursue her music career independently in 2005; her early years in New York's Lower East Side music scene were formative, performing at open-mic nights in small rock clubs and developing the raw, electrifying stage presence that would later captivate millions; after parting ways with her first record deal with Def Jam Recordings just three months after signing, she persevered and eventually signed with Interscope Records and Streamline Records through the mentorship of producer and rapper Akon, who recognized her songwriting brilliance; she also worked extensively as a songwriter for other artists, co-writing tracks for the likes of Britney Spears, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls before breaking through under her own name; her professional moniker "Lady Gaga" was inspired by Queen's 1984 song "Radio Ga Ga," and from the moment she burst onto the global stage with her debut album The Fame in August 2008, it became clear that pop music had found a wholly original and visionary new voice; The Fame spawned back-to-back worldwide number-one singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face," the latter becoming the best-selling single globally in 2009 with 9.8 million copies sold that year alone, and it spent a record 83 weeks on Billboard's Digital Songs chart; she followed with the landmark EP The Fame Monster in 2009, featuring the operatic pop anthem "Bad Romance" whose music video became the most-watched on YouTube as of April 2010, and together with The Fame, the two projects sold more than 15 million copies worldwide; her Monster Ball Tour, launched in November 2009, ran until May 2011 and grossed an extraordinary $227.4 million, making it the highest-grossing debut headlining concert tour in history at the time; she released the ambitious, anthemic Born This Way album in 2011, which featured its title track debuting at number one in over twenty countries and instantly becoming a landmark LGBTQ+ empowerment hymn, followed by the experimental art-pop album ARTPOP in 2013, the classic Hollywood jazz collaboration Cheek to Cheek with Tony Bennett in 2014 (which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album), and the deeply personal, country-and-rock-inflected Joanne in 2016, named in memory of her late aunt Joanne Germanotta, who died of lupus at the age of 19; she headlined the Super Bowl LI halftime show in February 2017 in Houston, Texas, delivering a performance that drew approximately 117 million television viewers and was praised universally as one of the greatest Super Bowl halftime shows of all time; throughout these years she also cultivated a parallel career as an actress of remarkable range and depth, earning her first major acting recognition for her chilling and Emmy Award-winning performance as the Countess in FX's American Horror Story: Hotel (2015–2016), before achieving full cinematic glory with her co-starring, co-producing, and songwriting role in A Star Is Born (2018), a romantic musical drama which she co-starred in and co-produced alongside director Bradley Cooper, playing Ally Maine, a struggling unknown singer-songwriter who is discovered and launched into superstardom by a fading country-rock legend; the film received widespread critical acclaim, earned over $436 million at the worldwide box office, and the film's centrepiece ballad "Shallow," co-written by Gaga, won her the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, the Critics' Choice Award, and four Grammy Awards including Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, making her in 2019 the first person in history to win an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy in the same year; she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the same film, further cementing her standing as a serious dramatic actress; she subsequently played the role of Lee 'Harlequin' Quinzel in Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), a muscial drama sequel opposite Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, for which she also released the companion album Harlequin and received praise for her performance even as the film itself garnered divisive critical and commercial reception; she released the dance-pop album Chromatica in 2020, whose second single "Rain on Me" with Ariana Grande debuted at number one in the United States, making her the third artist ever to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s; her 2022 Chromatica Ball stadium tour grossed $112.4 million across twenty dates, making her the highest-grossing female touring artist of the year; she has received 16 Grammy Awards, 22 MTV Video Music Awards, 2 Golden Globe Awards, 1 Academy Award, 1 BAFTA Award, a Sports Emmy Award, and numerous other honors, and has been recognised by Billboard as Woman of the Year (2015), by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People multiple times, and ranked among the best-selling music artists in history with over 170 million records sold worldwide; beyond music and film, Gaga is a formidable activist and philanthropist, having co-founded the Born This Way Foundation with her mother Cynthia Germanotta in 2012 to support the mental wellness of young people, promote kindness, and work toward creating a kinder and braver world, an organization that has partnered with the likes of California's Office of Youth and Community Restoration and dozens of academic institutions to advance mental health programming; she has been a fierce and outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, appearing at rallies and speaking before the United States Congress in support of anti-bullying legislation, and was appointed co-chair of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities by President Joe Biden in April 2023; she has spoken courageously and publicly about her own experiences with sexual assault as a teenager, PTSD, clinical depression, anxiety, and her 2017 diagnosis of fibromyalgia — a chronic pain condition that forced her to cancel ten dates on her Joanne World Tour — using her platform not merely to raise awareness but to actively reduce stigma and fight for mental healthcare reform; she founded the cosmetics brand Haus Laboratories (now Haus Labs) in 2019, establishing herself as a force in the beauty industry with a product line celebrated for its inclusivity and innovation; she is engaged to Michael Polansky, a Harvard-educated entrepreneur and co-founder of the Parker Foundation who became her partner in early 2020, and though the couple announced their engagement in 2024 and have spoken publicly about their desire to start a family together, they have no children as of early 2026; Lady Gaga stands as a towering and irreplaceable figure in modern cultural history—a woman who has transformed pain into art, adversity into advocacy, and raw talent into an enduring, generation-defining legacy that spans music, film, fashion, and humanitarian work across nearly two decades at the very pinnacle of global fame.