American singer and actress Bette Midler was BOTD in 1945. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, she began singing as a child, dropping out of studies at the University of Hawaii to pursue acting. She moved to New York City, performing on Broadway in the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof. She relocated to San Francisco in 1970, becoming famous for performing her cabaret act in a gay bathhouse. In 1972, she released her first album The Divine Miss M, produced by the then-unknown Barry Manilow, winning the first of many Grammy Awards. She dazzled movie audiences in the 1979 film The Rose, playing a drug-addicted bisexual rock singer inspired by Janis Joplin. A critical and commercial success, she earned a second Grammy for the title track The Rose, but struggled to establish a career as a prestige actress. Her career revived in the 1980s with a series of crude but highly successful Hollywood comedies Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People and Outrageous Fortune. In 1988, she achieved stratospheric success in the three-hankie weepy Beaches, winning a third Grammy for the theme song Wind Beneath My Wings, now inflicted on wedding and funeral attendees worldwide. She had further success in the films For the Boys, earning her second Oscar nomination, a TV film of Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Gypsy, the camp witch comedy Hocus Pocus, and the box office hit The First Wives Club. Her short-lived sitcom Bette, an unfortunate exercise in camp self-worship, was cancelled after its first season. Returning to Broadway in the 2000s, she co-produced the musical adaptation of Stephan Elliott‘s drag film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and won a Tony Award for a triumphant 2017 revival of the musical Hello, Dolly! Beloved for her bawdy humour, camp persona and booming torch-song vocals, she has strategically nurtured her gay fanbase, occupying an unusual position as a non-self-destructive gay icon. She has been married to Martin von Haselberg since 1984, with whom she has a daughter.