American actress and singer Liza Minnelli was BOTD in 1946. Born in Los Angeles, the eldest child of actress Judy Garland and filmmaker Vincente Minnelli, she grew up in New York, where she began her performing career. After television appearances with her mother on The Judy Garland Show, she made her professional stage debut in 1963, winning a Tony Award in 1965 for the play Flora the Red Menace, and made a successful transition to film in The Sterile Cuckoo. She is best known for playing Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s phenomenally successful 1972 film of John Kander and Fred Ebb‘s musical Cabaret (itself based on the Berlin diaries of Christopher Isherwood and the play by John van Druten). Showcasing her formidable singing, dancing and acting skills, the role made her internationally famous, winning her an Oscar, and remains her most well-known performance. She became one of the It-Girls of 1970s New York City, partying at Studio 54 and (by her own admission) hoovering up enough cocaine to kill a draughthorse. Her screen career faltered in the 1970s as musicals fell out of fashion, and her films New York, New York (directed by then-boyfriend Martin Scorsese) and Stepping Out struggled to find audiences. She had a surprise hit in comedy-romance Arthur, and enjoyed ongoing success on stage, including Liza With a Z (directed by Scorsese) and now legendary appearances at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall. In the late 1980s, she toured with Frank Sinatra and  Sammy Davis Jr. in a show called, appropriately, The Ultimate Event. In 1990, she joined the prestigious list of EGOTs, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. Beloved for her impassioned delivery of American standards and self-deprecating humour, her career was punctuated by disastrous marriages (including to the bisexual singer-songwriter Peter Allen), drug and alcohol addiction and fluctuating weight. Happily embracing her status as a gay and camp icon, Minnelli was an early advocate for HIV/AIDS charities and has inspired innumerable drag acts. In recent years, she made a splash on television comedy Arrested Development and played herself in the (otherwise terrible) film Sex and the City 2. Somehow she survived her life and is still wheeled out for YouTube singalongs with long-term friend Michael Feinstein. She has been portrayed in numerous biopics, most recently by Gemma-Leah Devereux in the 2019 film Judy and Kelli Barrett in the TV series Fosse/Verdon.