User:Kww/pastetest2

1986–2004: Early lifeStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, in New York City, to Cynthia (née Bissett) and Joseph Germanotta, an internet entrepreneur.[6][7] Descending from Sicilian/Italian and more distant French-Canadian roots, Gaga is the elder of two children.[8][9] Her sister, Natali, a fashion student, was born in 1992.[10][11] Despite her affluent upbringing on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Gaga says that her parents "both came from lower-class families, so we've worked for everything—my mother worked eight to eight out of the house, in telecommunications, and so did my father."[12][13] Gaga was raised Roman Catholic. From age eleven she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school on Manhattan's Upper East Side.[14][15][16] She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure": "I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn't fit in, and I felt like a freak."[17][18] Acquaintances dispute that she did not fit in at school.[19] Gaga began playing the piano at the age of four, wrote her first piano ballad at thirteen, and started to perform at open mic nights by the age of fourteen.[20][21] She performed lead roles in high school productions, including Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.[22] She also appeared in a very small role as a mischievous classmate in the television drama series The Sopranos in a 2001 episode titled "The Telltale Moozadell" and auditioned for New York shows without success.[12][23]After high school, her mother encouraged her to apply for the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), a musical theatre training conservatory at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[12] By age seventeen, after becoming one of twenty students to gain early admission, she lived in an NYU dorm on 11th Street.[22] In addition to sharpening her songwriting skills, she composed essays and analytical papers on art, religion, social issues and politics, including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst.[21][24][25] She also auditioned for various roles and won the part of an unsuspecting diner customer for MTV's Boiling Points, a prank reality television show.[12][26]