One of the most well-known celebrities today is Lady Gaga. She walked into the spotlight in 2008, and now 4 years later she is followed by millions of “little monsters,” (what Gaga fan’s call themselves) and is ranked as one of the top moneymakers, grossing more than 25 million dollars in 2011 alone. Lady Gaga is not only a pop star; she is a humanitarian, equal right’s activist, fashion icon, and artist.
Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986. She was born and raised in New York City. Gaga was raised Roman Catholic and attended the Covent of the Sacred Heart private all-girls school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the age of 17, Gaga’s mother encouraged her to apply for the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), which is a musical theatre training conservatory at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. CAP21’s mission is “CAP21 is dedicated to creating new work, developing new talent and building new audiences. CAP21 replenishes the American musical theatre by training the next generation of performers and infusing the entertainment industry at large with talent and source material. The goal is to create programs that achieve substantial and lasting contributions to the future of the arts.” (CITE) CAP21 landed Gaga many auditions and even spots on t.v. shows, such as MTV’s Boiling Points, and HBO’s The Sopranos. Gaga felt out of place at Tisch, and thought she could do better on her own, saying “Once you learn how to think about art, you can teach yourself," (CITE) In her second semester, when she was 19, Gaga withdrew from CAP21 to pursue being a “rockstar”. Her father agreed to pay her rent for a year, and if she was unsuccessful she would re-enroll to Tisch. Gaga moved into a small apartment on the Lower East Side. She started the Stefani Germanotta Band with friends from NYU, and started playing in local bars like The Bitter End in Greenwich Village and the Mercury Lounge on the Lower East