With more than 50 years in journalism under her designer belt, Barbara Walters has put the screws to everybody from Katharine Hepburn to Fidel Castro — and she’s had just as many interesting people in her own life!
Here are 10 things you don’t know about the 86-year-old interview queen, from her humble beginnings to her fave celebrity idol — plus her most scandalous hookups…
Though born in Boston, she grew up mostly in New York City and Miami Beach.
She joined “The Today Show” in 1961 as a writer and then became a “Today Girl” doing on-air fluff pieces.
Barbara published a nonfiction book, “How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything,” in 1970.
She had an affair in the ‘70s with married African-American U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, who died Jan. 3, 2015.
She always wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn, whom she interviewed in 1989.
When she pitched “The View” in 1997, she outlined a TV show featuring four or five women “of different backgrounds, different generations and different opinions.”
She underwent open-heart surgery in 2010 to repair an aortic valve.
In college, she “dated” notorious Communist witch hunter and mob lawyer Roy Cohn.
Barbara is pragmatic about sexism in the workplace, advising women: “Just do your job. Get in early. Stay late, and don’t complain. Fight the big fights.”
Retired from “The View,” she’s now appearing on Investigation Discovery’s nine-episode series “Barbara Walters Presents American Scandals.”
