Unit name	Royal Navy
Dates	16th century – present
Country	(to 1707) (1707–1800) (1801–present)
Allegiance	HM The Queen
Type	Navy
Size	37,300 regulars2,900 royal navy reserve19,600 regular reserve98 ships including RFA177 aircraft1 Aircraft Carrier1 Amphibious assault carrier2 Amphibious transport docks6 Destroyers 13 Frigates11 Submarines 15 Minesweepers
Command structure	British Armed Forces
Garrison	Ministry of Defence Main Building, Whitehall
Garrison label	Naval Staff Offices
Motto	Latin: Si vis pacem, para bellum If you wish for peace, prepare for war
Colors	Red and White
Colors label	Colours
March	"Heart of Oak"
Battle honours
Commander1	HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, KG
Commander1 label	Lord High Admiral
Commander2	Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, GCB OBE
Commander2 label	First Sea Lord
Notable commanders
Identification symbol
Identification symbol label	Naval Ensign
Identification symbol 2
Identification symbol 2 label	Naval Jack
Identification symbol 4 label
Aircraft attack	Lynx
Aircraft patrol	Merlin, Lynx, Sea King ASaC.7
Aircraft trainer	Tutor, Hawk, Jetstream, Firefly
Aircraft transport	Sea King }}

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is therefore known as the Senior Service. From the end of the 17th century until well into the 20th century it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power.

After World War II the Royal Navy was replaced by the United States Navy as the world's foremost naval power. During the Cold War it was transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, its role for the 21st century has returned to focus on global expeditionary operations.

The Royal Navy is a blue-water navy and its ability to project power globally is considered second only to the U.S. Navy. As a prominent blue-water navy it operates an array of technologically sophisticated ships including an aircraft carrier, a helicopter carrier, landing platform docks, ballistic missile submarines, nuclear fleet submarines, guided missile destroyers, frigates, mine counter-measures and patrol vessels. The Royal Navy maintains the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons via its ballistic missile submarines.

The Royal Navy is a constituent component of the Naval Service, which also comprises the Royal Marines, Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Marines Reserve. As of mid 2011 the Royal Navy numbered approximately 37,300 regulars and 2,900 Royal Naval Reserve. In addition, there were 19,600 regular reserves.

In June 2011 there were 79 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy, 19 vessels of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) also contribute to the Royal Navy's available sea-going assets. The RFA primarily serves to replenish Royal Navy warships at sea, but also augments the Royal Navy's amphibious warfare capabilities through its three .

History

Development of England's navy

900–1500

The strength of the fleets of the united Kingdom of England was an important element in the kingdom's power in the 10th century. At one point Aethelred II had an especially large fleet built by a national levy of one ship for every 310 hides of land, but it is uncertain whether this was a standard or exceptional model for raising fleets. During the period of Danish rule in the 11th century the authorities maintained a standing fleet by taxation, and this continued for a time under the restored English regime of Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–1066), who frequently commanded fleets in person.

English naval power seems to have declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into naval service in time of war. From time to time a few "king's ships" owned by the monarch were built for specifically warlike purposes, but unlike some European states England did not maintain a small permanent core of warships in peacetime. England's naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow.

With the Viking era at an end, and conflict with France largely confined to the French lands of the English monarchy, England faced little threat from the sea during the 12th and 13th centuries, but in the 14th century the outbreak of the Hundred Years War dramatically increased the French menace. Early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was thereafter confined to French soil and England's naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. However, while subsequent French invasion schemes came to nothing, England's naval forces could not prevent frequent raids on the south-coast ports by the French and their Genoese and Castilian allies; such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V (reigned 1413–1422).

1500–1707

The standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, was created in the 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, which saw privately-owned ships combining with the Navy Royal in highly profitable raids against Spanish commerce and colonies. In 1588 Philip II of Spain sent the Spanish Armada against England in order to end English support for Dutch rebels, to stop English corsair activity and to depose the Protestant Elizabeth I. The Spaniards sailed from Lisbon, planning to escort an invasion force from the Spanish Netherlands but the plan failed due to poor planning, English harrying, blocking action by the Dutch and mainly as a result of an extremely bad weather.

During the early 17th century England's relative naval power deteriorated and a new threat emerged from the slaving raids of the Barbary corsairs, which the Navy had little success in countering. Charles I undertook a major programme of warship building, creating a small force of powerful ships, but his methods of fund-raising to finance the fleet contributed to the outbreak of the English Civil War. In the wake of this conflict and the abolition of the monarchy, the new Commonwealth of England, isolated and threatened from all sides, dramatically expanded the Navy, which became the most powerful in the world.

The new regime's introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654), the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive. English tactical improvements resulted in a series of crushing victories in 1653 at Portland, the Gabbard and Scheveningen, bringing peace on favourable terms. This was the first war fought largely, on the English side, by purpose-built, state-owned warships.

As a result of their defeat in this war, the Dutch transformed their navy on the English model, and the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) was a closely fought struggle between evenly-matched opponents, with a crushing English victory at the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) countered by Dutch triumph in the epic Four Days Battle (1666). In 1667 the restored royal government of Charles II of England was forced to lay up the fleet in port for lack of money to keep it at sea, while negotiating for peace. Disaster followed, as the Dutch fleet mounted the Raid on the Medway, breaking into Chatham Dockyard and capturing or burning many of the Navy's largest ships at their moorings. In the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674), Charles II allied with Louis XIV of France against the Dutch, but the combined Anglo-French fleet was fought to a standstill in a series of inconclusive battles, while the French invasion by land was warded off.

The influence and reforms of Samuel Pepys, the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both Charles II and subsequently King James II, were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy. During the 1670s and 1680s the Navy succeeded in permanently ending the threat to English shipping from the Barbary corsairs, inflicting defeats which induced the Barbary states to conclude long-lasting peace treaties. Following the Glorious Revolution, England joined the European coalition against Louis XIV in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697) in alliance with the Dutch. The allies were defeated at Beachy Head (1690), but victory at Barfleur-La Hogue (1691) was a turning-point marking the end of France's brief pre-eminence at sea and the beginning of an enduring English, later British, supremacy.

In the course of the 17th century the Navy completed the transition from a semi-amateur Navy Royal fighting in conjunction with private vessels into a fully professional institution, a Royal Navy. Its financial provisions were gradually regularised, it came to rely on dedicated warships only, and it developed a professional officer corps with a defined career structure, superseding an earlier mix of sailors and socially prominent former soldiers. Under the Acts of Union in 1707 the three-ship Royal Scots Navy merged with that of England to create a Royal Navy of the new Kingdom of Great Britain.

Development of the British navy

1707–1815

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries the Royal Navy was the largest in the world, but until 1805 its forces were repeatedly matched or exceeded in numbers by a combination of enemies. Despite this it was able to maintain an almost uninterrupted ascendancy over its rivals through superiority in financing, tactics, training, organisation, social cohesion, hygiene, dockyard facilities, logistical support and, from the middle of the 18th century, warship design and construction.

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714), the Navy operated in conjunction with the Dutch against the navies of France and Spain. Naval operations in European waters focused on the acquisition of a Mediterranean base, contributing to a long-lasting alliance with Portugal in 1703 and the capture of Gibraltar (1704) and Minorca (1708), which were both retained by Britain after the war, and on supporting the efforts of Britain's Austrian Habsburg allies to seize control of Spain and its Mediterranean dependencies from the Bourbons. French naval squadrons did considerable damage to English and Dutch commercial convoys during the early years of the war. However a major victory over France and Spain at the Battle of Vigo Bay (1702), further successes in battle, and the scuttling of the entire French Mediterranean fleet at Toulon in 1707 virtually cleared the Navy's opponents from the seas for the latter part of the war. Naval operations also enabled the conquest of the French colonies in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Further conflict with Spain followed in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, in which the Navy helped thwart a Spanish attempt to regain Sicily and Sardinia from Austria and Savoy, defeating a Spanish fleet at Cape Passaro, and an undeclared war in the 1720s in which Spain tried to retake Gibraltar and Minorca.

After a period of relative peace, the Navy became engaged in the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1742) against Spain, which was dominated by a series of costly and mostly unsuccessful attacks on Spanish ports in the Caribbean, chiefly at Cartagena. In 1742 the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was driven to withdraw from the war in half an hour by the threat of a bombardment of its capital Naples by a small British squadron. The war was quickly followed by the wider War of the Austrian Succession (1744–1748), again pitting Britain against France. Naval fighting in this war, which for the first time included major operations in the Indian Ocean, was largely inconclusive, the most significant event being the failure of an attempted French invasion of England in 1744. The subsequent Seven Years War (1755–1763) saw the Navy conduct amphibious campaigns leading to the conquest of French Canada, French colonies in the Caribbean and West Africa and small islands off the French coast, while operations in the Indian Ocean contributed to the destruction of French power in India. A new French attempt to invade Britain was thwarted by the extraordinary Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759, fought in a gale on a dangerous lee shore. Once again the French navy was effectively eliminated from the war, abandoning major operations. In 1762 the resumption of hostilities with Spain led to the British capture of Havana, along with a Spanish fleet sheltering there, and Manila.

In the American Revolutionary War, the small Continental Navy of frigates fielded by the rebel colonists was obliterated with ease, but the entry of France, Spain and the Netherlands into the war against Britain produced a combination of opposing forces which deprived the Navy of its position of superiority for the first time since the 1690s, briefly but decisively. The war saw a series of indecisive battles in the Atlantic and Caribbean, in which the Navy failed to achieve the conclusive victories needed to secure the supply lines of British forces in North America and cut off the colonial rebels from outside support. The most important operation of the war came in 1781 when in the Battle of the Chesapeake the British fleet failed to lift the French blockade of Lord Cornwallis's army, resulting in Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Although this disaster effectively concluded the fighting in North America, it continued in the Indian Ocean, where the French were prevented from re-establishing a meaningful foothold in India, and in the Caribbean. Victory there in the Battle of the Saintes in 1782 and the relief of Gibraltar later the same year symbolised the restoration of British naval ascendancy, but this came too late to prevent the independence of the Thirteen Colonies.

The eradication of scurvy from the Royal Navy in the 1790s was finally due to the chairman of the Navy's Sick and Hurt Board, Gilbert Blane, who finally put Bachstrom and Lind's long-ignored prescription of fresh lemons to use during the Napoleonic Wars. Other navies soon adopted this successful solution. During the 18th century, scurvy killed more British sailors than enemy action. For instance, during the Seven Years War, the Royal Navy reported that it conscripted 184,899 sailors, of who 133,708 died of disease or were 'missing', and scurvy was the principal disease. Limey, a Caribbean and North American slang term for British sailors and later the British in general, is believed to derive from the practice.

The Wars of the French Revolution (1793–1801) and Napoleonic Wars (1803–1814 and 1815) saw the Royal Navy reach a peak of efficiency, dominating the navies of all Britain's adversaries, which spent most of the war blockaded in port. The Navy achieved an emphatic early victory at the Glorious First of June (1794), and gained a number of smaller victories while supporting abortive Royalist efforts to regain control of France. In the course of one such operation the majority of the French Mediterranean fleet was captured or destroyed during a short-lived occupation of Toulon in 1793. The military successes of the French Revolutionary regime brought the Spanish and Dutch navies into the war on the French side, but the losses inflicted on the Dutch at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797 and the surrender of their surviving fleet to a landing force at Den Helder in 1799 effectively eliminated the Dutch navy from the war. The Spithead and Nore mutinies in 1797 incapacitated the Channel and North Sea fleets, leaving Britain potentially exposed to invasion, but were rapidly resolved. The British Mediterranean fleet under Nelson failed to intercept Napoleon Bonaparte's 1798 expedition to invade Egypt, but annihilated his fleet at the Battle of the Nile, leaving his army isolated. The emergence of a Baltic coalition opposed to Britain led to an attack on Denmark, which lost much of its fleet in the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) and came to terms with Britain. During these years the Navy also conducted amphibious operations which captured most of the French Caribbean islands and the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and in the Dutch East Indies, but all of these gains except Ceylon and Trinidad were returned following the Peace of Amiens in 1802, which briefly halted the fighting. War resumed in 1803 and Napoleon, now ruling France as emperor, attempted to assemble a large enough fleet from the French and Spanish squadrons blockaded in various ports to cover an invasion of England. The Navy frustrated these efforts and, following the abandonment of the invasion plan, the combined Franco-Spanish fleet which had been gathered was smashed by Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). This victory marked the culmination of decades of developing British naval dominance, and left the Navy in a position of uncontested hegemony at sea which endured until the early years of the 20th century.

After Trafalgar, large-scale fighting at sea was limited to the destruction of small, fugitive French squadrons and amphibious operations which again captured the colonies which had been restored at Amiens, along with France's Indian Ocean base at Mauritius. In 1807 French plans to seize the Danish fleet led to a pre-emptive British attack on Copenhagen, resulting in the surrender of the entire Danish navy. The impressment of British and American sailors from American ships contributed to the outbreak of the War of 1812 (1812–1814) against the United States, in which the naval fighting was largely confined to commerce raiding and single-ship actions. The brief renewal of war after Napoleon's return to power in 1815 did not bring a resumption of naval combat.

1815–1914

Between 1815 and 1914 the Navy saw little serious action, owing to the absence of any opponent strong enough to challenge its dominance. It succeeded in maintaining the huge advantage it had built up over all potential rivals despite the comprehensive transformation of naval warfare brought about by steam propulsion, metal ship construction and high-explosive munitions, which required the complete replacement of war fleets. Thanks to British leadership in the Industrial Revolution, the country enjoyed unparalleled shipbuilding capacity and financial resources, which ensured that no rival could take advantage of these revolutionary changes to negate the British advantage in ship numbers. The Navy was thus able to preserve a numerical dominance based on the 'two power standard', which stipulated that it should remain larger than its two most powerful competitors combined. The end of the 19th century saw structural changes brought about by the First Sea Lord (Chief of Naval Staff) Jackie Fisher who retired, scrapped, or placed into reserve many of the older vessels, making funds and manpower available for newer ships. He also oversaw the development of , the first all-big-gun ship, which rendered all existing battleships obsolete. Unlike the far more dramatic technological revolutions of the mid-19th century, this opportunity was exploited to mount a serious challenge to British naval supremacy, since there was now a rival able to compete with Britain's shipbuilding capacity. The industrial and economic development of Germany had by this time overtaken Britain, and a politically charged and expensive arms race ensued. Britain emerged from this contest triumphant, in as much as it was able to maintain a substantial numerical advantage over Germany, but for the first time since 1805 another navy now existed with the capacity to challenge the Royal Navy in battle.

1914–1945

During the two World Wars, the Royal Navy played a vital role in keeping the United Kingdom supplied with food, arms and raw materials and in defeating the German campaigns of unrestricted submarine warfare in the first and second battles of the Atlantic.

During the First World War most of the Royal Navy's strength was deployed at home in the Grand Fleet, confronting the German High Seas Fleet across the North Sea. A few inconclusive clashes took place between them, chiefly the Battle of Jutland in 1916. These exposed the deficiencies of a British approach to capital ship design which prioritised speed and firepower, as against the German emphasis on resilience, as well as the inadequacies of Britain's hastily-assembled munitions industry. However, the Germans were repeatedly outmaneuvered and the British numerical advantage proved insurmountable, leading the High Seas Fleet to abandon its challenge to British dominance. As a result, the Navy was able to maintain an effective blockade against its enemies' overseas trade throughout the war.

Elsewhere in the world, the Navy hunted down the handful of German surface raiders at large. During the Dardanelles Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in 1915 it suffered serious losses during a failed attempt to break through the system of minefields and shore batteries defending the straits.

The most serious menace faced by the Navy came from the attacks on merchant shipping mounted by German U-boats. For much of the war this submarine campaign was restricted by prize rules requiring merchant ships to be warned and evacuated before sinking. In 1915 the Germans renounced these restrictions and began to sink merchant ships on sight, but later returned to the previous rules of engagement to placate neutral opinion. A resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 raised the prospect of Britain and its allies being starved into submission. The Navy's response to this new form of warfare had proved inadequate due to its refusal to adopt a convoy system for merchant shipping, despite the demonstrated effectiveness of the technique in protecting troop ships. The belated introduction of convoys sharply reduced losses and brought the U-boat threat under control.

In the inter-war period the Royal Navy was stripped of much of its power. The Washington and London Naval Treaties imposed scrappings of capital ships and limitations on new construction. In 1932 the Invergordon Mutiny took place over a proposed 25% pay cut which was eventually reduced to 10%. International tensions increased in the mid-1930s and the Second London Naval Treaty of 1935 failed to halt the development of a naval arms race. By 1938 treaty limits were effectively ignored. The rearmament of the Royal Navy was well under way by this point; the Royal Navy had begun construction of still treaty affected and undergunned new battlehips and its first full-sized purpose-built aircraft carriers. In addition to new construction several existing old battleships (whose gun power offset to a significant extent the weakly armed new battleships), battlecruisers and heavy cruisers were reconstructed, and anti-aircraft weaponry reinforced, while new technologies such as ASDIC, Huff-Duff and hydrophones were developed. The Navy had lost control of naval aviation when the Royal Naval Air Service was merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force in 1918, but regained it with the establishment of the Fleet Air Arm in 1937. However, the effectiveness of its aircraft lagged far behind its rivals and around this time the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy began to surpass the Royal Navy in power.

During the early phases of World War II the Royal Navy provided critical cover during British evacuations from Dunkirk. At the Battle of Taranto, Admiral Cunningham commanded a fleet that launched the first all-aircraft naval attack in history. Later Cunningham was determined that as many Commonwealth soldiers as possible should be evacuated after their defeat on Crete. When army generals feared he would lose too many ships, he famously said, "It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue."

The Royal Navy suffered huge losses in the early stages of the war, including , , and in the European Theatre, and and off Singapore. Of the 1,418 men on the ''Hood'', only three survived. Over 3,000 people were lost when the converted troopship ''Lancastria'' was sunk in June 1940, creating the greatest maritime disaster in Britain's history. There were, however, early successes against enemy surface ships, in particular off Norway; by 1941, with the sinking of the ''Bismarck'', Germany effectively lost her surface ship capabilities. As well as providing cover in operations, it was also vital in guarding the sea lanes that enabled British forces to fight in remote parts of the world such as North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Far East. Naval supremacy in the Atlantic was vital to the amphibious operations carried out, such as the invasions of Northwest Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Normandy.

Postwar period and early 21st century

After World War II the decline of the British Empire and the economic hardships in Britain at the time forced the reduction in the size and capability of the Royal Navy. The increasingly powerful U.S. Navy took on the former role of the Royal Navy as global naval power and police force of the sea. However, the combination of the threat of the Soviet Union, and Britain's commitments throughout the world, created a new role for the Navy. Governments since World War II have had to balance commitments with increasing budgetary pressures, partly due to the increasing cost of weapons systems, what historian Paul Kennedy called the Upward Spiral. These pressures have been exacerbated by bitter inter-service rivalry.

HMS ''Dreadnought'', the Royal Navy's first nuclear submarine, was launched in the 1960s. The navy also received its first nuclear weapons with the introduction of the first of the ''Resolution''-class submarines armed with the Polaris missile. The introduction of Polaris followed the cancellation of the GAM-87 Skybolt missile which had been proposed for use by the Air Force's V-Bomber force. As a result, the navy became responsible for the maintenance of the UK's entire nuclear deterrent. The financial costs attached to nuclear deterrence became an increasingly significant issue for the navy.

The Navy began plans to replace its fleet of aircraft carriers in the mid-1960s. A plan was drawn up for three large aircraft carriers, each displacing about 60,000 tons; the plan was designated CVA-01. These carriers would be able to operate the latest aircraft that were coming into service, and would keep the Royal Navy’s place as a major naval power. However, the new Labour government that came into power in the mid-1960s was determined to cut defence expenditure as a means to reduce public spending, and in the 1966 Defence White Paper the project was cancelled.

After this the navy began to shrink and the navy was forced to make do with three much smaller s. The fleet was now centred around anti-submarine warfare in the north Atlantic as opposed to its former position with worldwide strike capability.

One of the most important operations conducted predominantly by the Royal Navy after the Second World War was the 1982 defeat of Argentina in the Falkland Islands War. Despite losing four naval ships and other civilian and RFA ships the Royal Navy proved it was still able to fight and win a battle 8,345 miles (12,800 km) from Great Britain. is the only nuclear-powered submarine to have engaged an enemy ship with torpedoes, sinking the Argentine cruiser ARA ''General Belgrano''. The war also underlined the importance of aircraft carriers and submarines and exposed the weaknesses of the service's late 20th century dependence on chartered merchant vessels.

Before the Falklands War in 1982 Defence Secretary John Nott had advocated and initiated a series of cutbacks to the Navy. The Falklands War though, proved a need for the Royal Navy to regain an expeditionary and littoral capability which, with its resources and structure at the time, would prove difficult. At the end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s the Royal Navy was a force focused on blue water anti-submarine warfare. Its purpose was to search for and destroy Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic, and to operate the nuclear deterrent submarine force.

The Royal Navy also took part in the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghanistan Campaign, and the 2003 Iraq War, the last of which saw RN warships bombard positions in support of the Al Faw Peninsula landings by Royal Marines. In August 2005 the Royal Navy rescued seven Russians stranded in a submarine off the Kamchatka peninsula. The Navy's Scorpio 45 remote-controlled mini-sub freed the Russian submarine from the fishing nets and cables that had held it for three days. The Royal Navy was also involved in an incident involving Somali pirates in November 2008, after the pirates tried to capture a civilian vessel.

Today

Personnel

The Naval Service comprises both the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. For December 2009, the total trained regular strength of the Naval Service was 34,660, of which 27,710 were Royal Navy and 6940 were Royal Marines. Within this total, 3960 were untrained personnel. The Navy List reports an up to date list of all officers within the Royal Navy. There are 380 Full-time reserve service personnel within these figures. HMS Raleigh at Torpoint, Cornwall is the basic training facility for newly enlisted personnel. Britannia Royal Naval College is the initial officer training establishment for the navy, located at Dartmouth, Devon.

Personnel are divided into a general duties branch, which includes those seamen officers eligible for command, and other branches including the Royal Naval Engineers, medical, and Logistics Officers, the renamed Supply Officer branch. Present day officers and ratings have several different Royal Navy uniforms; some are blue, others are white.

Women began to join the Royal Navy in 1917 with the formation of the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS), which was disbanded after the end of the First World War in 1919. It was revived in 1939, and the WRNS continued until disbandment in 1993, as a result of the decision to fully integrate women into the structures of the Royal Navy. The only restriction on women currently in the RN is that they may not serve on submarines, or with the Royal Marine Commandos.

Fleet composition

In the 1990s the navy began a series of projects to modernise the fleet and convert it from a North Atlantic-based anti-submarine force to an expeditionary force. This has involved the replacement of much of the Fleet and has seen a number of large procurement projects.

Large fleet units – amphibious and carriers

Two ''Queen Elizabeth''-class supercarriers have been ordered and are to be a new generation of aircraft carrier to replace the three aircraft carriers. The two vessels are expected to cost £3.9 billion, will displace 65,000 tons and, although somewhat delayed, are planned to enter service from around 2016. The initial decision was that both would operate the STOVL variant of the F-35 Lightning II, however following the Strategic Defence and Security Review ordered by the Coalition Government in June 2010, it was announced that the first of the carriers will be fitted with catapults to operate the F-35C CTOL carrier variant. The second carrier will be placed in extended readiness after its introduction to service. This leaves open the options to rotate them, to ensure a continuous UK carrier-strike capability; to re-generate more quickly a two-carrier strike capability, or to sell one of the carriers which would result in the UK to relying on cooperation with a close ally to provide continuous carrier-strike capability. In addition to this, a dedicated helicopter carrier, HMS ''Ocean'' and two amphibious assault ships, HMS ''Albion'' (Royal Navy Fleet Flagship) and HMS ''Bulwark'' complements the aircraft carrier force. HMS ''Illustrious'' is the sole remaining ''Invincible''-class carrier and will replace Ocean as a helicopter carrier until Illustrious' final withdrawal in 2014.

The introduction of the four vessels of the Bay class of landing ship dock into the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in 2006 and 2007, and the two landing platform docks gave the Royal Navy a significantly enhanced amphibious capability. In November 2006 First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band said, "These ships represent a major uplift in the Royal Navy's war fighting capability." One Bay-class ship was sold to Australia recently.

Escort units

The escort fleet, in the form of frigates and destroyers, is the traditional workhorse of the Navy, and is also being updated. The 2010 fleet of five Type 42 destroyers were to be replaced with the much larger Type 45 destroyer.

Six Type 45 destroyers are planned, of which 2 are in service, 1 is waiting to enter service and 3 are under construction . Under the terms of the original contract the Navy was to order twelve vessels, but only the six will be constructed. The main role of the Type 45 destroyer is anti-air warfare; in order to fulfil this role, it will be equipped with the Sea Viper (formerly known as PAAMS) integrated anti-aircraft system which will fire Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles. The Type 45 will operate the highly sophisticated Sampson radar system that will be fully integrated into the PAAMS system. but have little anti-ship capability.

As soon as possible after 2020 the Type 23 will be replaced by Type 26 frigates, designed to be easily adapted to change roles and capabilities depending on the strategic circumstances".

The last frigate to enter service was the Type 23 frigate in 2002. On 21 July 2004, in the Delivering Security in a Changing World review of defence spending, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced that three frigates of the fleet of sixteen would be paid off as part of a continuous cost-cutting strategy and were sold to Chile. Several designs have been created for a new generation frigate such as the Future Surface Combatant, which is now known as the Type 26 frigate. The Strategic Defence and Security Review of October 2010 stated "As soon as possible after 2020 the Type 23 will be replaced by Type 26 frigates, designed to be easily adapted to change roles and capabilities depending on the strategic circumstances". It proposed a surface fleet of 19 frigates and destroyers; there are 6 Type 45 destroyers in the fleet. It was announced in December 2010 that the remaining fleet of four batch 3 Type 22 frigates will be withdrawn from service by the end of April 2011.

Submarines

Seven s are planned, with the first in service, three under construction, the fifth ordered, and the procurement process started for the sixth. The first, entered service in August 2010. These submarines are much larger than their predecessors, the and are expected to displace 7,800 tons submerged. Six ''Trafalgar''-class nuclear submarines are currently in service. In December 2006, plans were unveiled for a new class of four ballistic missile submarines to replace the , which is due to be replaced by 2024. This new class will mean that the United Kingdom will maintain a nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet and the ability to launch nuclear weapons.

Other vessels

At the beginning of the 1990s the Royal Navy had two classes of offshore patrol vessel, the , and the larger . However, in 1997 a decision was taken to replace them. An order for three much larger offshore patrol vessels, the was placed in 2001. Unusually, the three River-class ships are owned by Vosper Thorneycroft, and leased to the Royal Navy until 2013. This relationship is defined by a ground-breaking Contractor Logistic Support contract which contracts the ships' availability to the RN, including technical and stores support. A modified River-class vessel, , was commissioned in July 2007 and became the Falkland Islands guardship. The Royal Navy also has the and the Hunt-class mine countermeasure vessel. The Hunt class of 8 vessels are mine countermeasure vessels that combine the separate role of the traditional minesweeper and that of the active minehunter in one hull. If required, they can take on the role of offshore patrol vessels. The Royal Navy has a mandate to provide support to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which comes in the form of the dedicated Antarctic Patrol Ship . The four vessels were replaced by the survey vessel which surveys the deep ocean. The other survey vessels of the Royal Navy are the two multi-role ships of the ''Echo'' class which came into service in 2002 and 2003.

Current role

The current role of the Royal Navy (RN) is to protect British interests at home and abroad, executing the foreign and defence policies of Her Majesty's Government through the exercise of military effect, diplomatic activities and other activities in support of these objectives. The RN is also a key element of the UK contribution to NATO, with a number of assets allocated to NATO tasks at any time. These objectives are delivered via a number of core capabilities:

Maintenance of the UK Nuclear Deterrent through a policy of ''Continuous at Sea Deterrence''.

Provision of two medium scale maritime task groups with organic air assets.

Delivery of the UK Commando force.

Contribution of assets to the Joint Helicopter Command.

Maintenance of standing patrol commitments.

Provision of Mine Counter Measures capability to UK and allied commitments.

Provision of Hydrographic and meteorological services deployable worldwide.

Protection of the UK and EU's Exclusive Economic Zone.

Current deployments

See Standing Royal Navy deployments : ''For current events, see Libyan no-fly zone''

The Royal Navy is currently deployed in many areas of the world, including a number of standing Royal Navy deployments. These include several home tasks as well as overseas deployments. The Navy is deployed in the Mediterranean as part of standing NATO deployments including mine countermeasures and NATO Maritime Group 2 and until 2010 had the now disbanded Royal Navy Cyprus Squadron. In both the North and South Atlantic RN vessels are patrolling. There is always a Falkland Islands Patrol Vessel on deployment, currently the new vessel .

thumb|left|The [[F-35 Lightning II|F-35 will replace the Harrier aboard the ''Queen Elizabeth''-class aircraft carriers, which will replace the ''Invincible''-class aircraft carriers.]]In the Persian Gulf, the RN sustains a number of commitments in support of both national and coalition efforts to stabilise the region. The Armilla Patrol, which started in 1980, is the navy's primary commitment the Gulf region. The Royal Navy also contributes heavily to the combined maritime forces in the Gulf in support of coalition operations. The UK Maritime Component Commander (UKMCC), overseer of all UK warships in the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters, is also deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces.

The Royal Navy operates a Response Force Task Group (a product of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review) which is poised to respond globally to short-notice tasking across a diverse range of defence activities such as non-combatant evacuation operations, disaster relief, humanitarian aid or amphibious operations. In 2011 the first deployment of the task group occurred under the name 'COUGAR 11' which will see them transit through the Mediterranean where they will take part in multinational amphibious exercises before moving further east through the Suez Canal for further exercises in the Indian Ocean.

The Royal Navy has been responsible for training the fledging Iraqi Navy and securing Iraq's oil terminals following the cessation of hostilities in the country. The Iraqi Training and Advisory Mission (Navy) (Umm Qasr), headed by a Royal Navy captain, has been responsible for the former duty whilst Commander Task Force (CTF) Iraqi Maritime, a Royal Navy commodore, has been responsible for the latter.

Operation Atalanta, the European Unions Anti-Piracy operation in the Indian Ocean, is permanently commanded by a senior Royal Navy or Royal Marines officer at Northwood headquarters and the navy contributes ships to the operation.

The Royal Navy contributes to standing NATO formations and maintains forces as part of the NATO response force. The RN also has a long-standing commitment to supporting the Five Powers Defence Arrangements countries and occasionally deploys to the Far East as a result. This deployment typically consists of a frigate and a survey vessel, operating separately.

Command, control and organisation

The head of the Royal Navy is the Lord High Admiral, a position which has been held by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh since 2011. The position had been held by the Sovereign (the Sovereign being the overall head of the British Armed Forces) from 1964 to 2011.

The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, an Admiral and member of the Defence Council of the United Kingdom. The Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence, which directs the Navy Board, a sub-committee of the Admiralty Board comprising only naval officers and Ministry of Defence (MOD) civil servants. These are all based in MOD Main Building in London, where the First Sea Lord, also known as the Chief of the Naval Staff, is supported by the Naval Staff Department.

Organisation

Full command of the Royal Navy is vested in Commander-in-Chief Fleet, CINCFLEET, who has responsibility for the provision of Force Elements at Readiness to conduct military and diplomatic tasks as required by Her Majesty's Government, including recruitment and training of personnel. CINCFLEET has responsibility for personnel, commando forces, ships and submarines and Royal Fleet Auxiliary in commission. CINCFLEET command is exercised through the Navy Command Headquarters, based at in Portsmouth. An Operational Headquarters, the Northwood Headquarters, at Northwood, London, is co-located with the Permanent Joint Headquarters of the United Kingdom's armed forces, and a NATO Regional Command, Allied Maritime Component Command Northwood (AMCCN).

The Royal Navy was the first of the three armed forces to combine the personnel and training command, under the Principal Personnel Officer, with the operational and policy command, combining CINCFLEET and Naval Home Command into a single organisation, Fleet Command, in 2005 and becoming Navy Command in 2008. Within the combined command the Second Sea Lord, Commander in Chief Naval Home command, continues to act as the Principal Personnel Officer.

The Naval Command senior appointments are:

Admiral Sir Trevor Soar, Commander-in-Chief, Fleet

Commander-in-Chief Fleet Headquarters:

* Deputy CINC and Chief of Staff: Vice Admiral Richard Ibbotson, ''(based in HMS ''Excellent'', commands the Headquarters).''

* Chief of Staff (Capability): Major General Garry Robison

* Commander Operations: Rear Admiral Mark Anderson ''(based at Northwood, also Rear Admiral Submarines and Commander Submarine Allied Forces North (NATO)).''

* Commander UK Maritime Forces: Rear Admiral Duncan Potts ''(deployable Force Commander responsible for Maritime Battle Staffs; UK Amphibious Task Group/UK Response Force Task Group, UK Maritime Component Command).''

* Deputy Commander UK Maritime Forces: Commodore Simon Ancona

* Commander UK Amphibious Force: Major General Buster Howes, also the Commandant General Royal Marines

* Flag Officer Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland: Rear Admiral Martin Alabaster

* Flag Officer Sea Training: Rear Admiral C. A. Snow

Second Sea Lord and Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command

* Second Sea Lord:Vice Admiral Charles Montgomery CBE

* Chief of Staff (Personnel)/Naval Secretary: Rear Admiral David Steele CBE BA FCILT Barrister-at-Law

* Director General Naval Chaplaincy Services: The Venerable J. Green OHC

Intelligence support to fleet operations is provided by intelligence sections at the various headquarters and from MOD Defence Intelligence, renamed from the Defence Intelligence Staff in early 2010. There are further details of the Royal Navy's historical organisation at List of fleets and major commands of the Royal Navy.

Locations

The Royal Navy currently operates three ''bases'' in the United Kingdom where commissioned ships are based; Portsmouth, Clyde and Devonport, Plymouth — Devonport is the largest operational naval base in the UK and Western Europe. Each base hosts a Flotilla Command under a Commodore, or in the case of Clyde a Captain, responsible for the provision of Operational Capability using the ships and submarines within the flotilla. 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines is similarly commanded by a Brigadier and based in Plymouth.

Historically the Royal Navy maintained Royal Navy Dockyards around the world. Dockyards of the Royal Navy are harbours where ships are overhauled and refitted. Only four are operating today; at Devonport, Faslane, Rosyth and at Portsmouth. A Naval Base Review was undertaken in 2006 and early 2007, the outcome being announced by Secretary of State, Des Browne the Defence Secretary confirming that all would remain however some reductions in manpower were anticipated.

The academy where initial training for future Royal Navy officers takes place is Britannia Royal Naval College, located on a hill overlooking Dartmouth, Devon. Basic training for future ratings takes place at HMS Raleigh at Torpoint, Cornwall, close to HMNB Devonport.

Significant numbers of naval personnel are employed within the Ministry of Defence, Defence Equipment and Support and on exchange with the Army and Royal Air Force. Small numbers are also on exchange within other government departments and with allied fleets, such as the United States Navy.

The navy also posts personnel in small units around the world to support ongoing operations and maintain standing commitments. Nineteen personnel are station in Gibraltar to support the small Gibraltar Squadron, the RNs only permanent overseas squadron. A number of personnel are also based at East Cove Military Port and RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands to support APT(S). Small numbers of personnel are based in Diego Garcia (Naval Party 1002), Miami (NP 1011 – AUTEC), Singapore (NP 1022), Dubai (NP 1023) and elsewhere.

Royal Marines

The Royal Marines are a maritime-focused, amphibious, highly specialised light infantry force. They are capable of deploying at short notice in support of the United Kingdom Government's military and diplomatic objectives overseas. The Royal Marines are organised into a light infantry brigade, 3 Commando Brigade, and a number of separate units. These include the Fleet Protection Group Royal Marines (previously the Comacchio Group), a special guard and oil rig guard force, the Special Boat Service, a maritime special forces unit, and an assault craft unit, 1 Assault Group Royal Marines, which supervises landing craft on board the amphibious ships and landing craft training.

Titles and naming

Of the Navy

The British Royal Navy is commonly referred to as the "Royal Navy" both in the United Kingdom and other countries. Navies of Commonwealth of Nations countries where the British monarch is also head of state also include their national name e.g. Royal Australian Navy. Some navies of other monarchies, such as the ''Koninklijke Marine'' (Royal Netherlands Navy) and ''Kungliga Flottan'' (Royal Swedish Navy), are also called "Royal Navy" in their own language and the French Navy, despite France being a republic since 1870, is often nicknamed ''"La Royale"'' (literally: The Royal).

Of ships

Royal Navy ships in commission are prefixed since 1789 with Her Majesty's Ship (His Majesty's Ship), abbreviated to HMS; for example, . Submarines are styled HM Submarine, similarly HMS. Names are allocated to ships and submarines by a naming committee within the MOD and given by class, with the names of ships within a class often being thematic (for example, the Type 23s are named after British Dukes) or traditional (for example, the ''Invincible''-class aircraft carriers all carry the names of famous historic ships). Names are frequently re-used, offering a new ship the rich heritage, battle honours and traditions of her predecessors. Often, a particular vessel class will be named after the first ship of that type to be built.

As well as a name, each ship and submarine of the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is given a pennant number which in part denotes its role.

Custom and tradition

The Royal Navy has several formal customs and traditions including the use of ensigns and ships badges. Royal Navy ships have several ensigns used when under way and when in port. Commissioned ships and submarines wear the White Ensign at the stern whilst alongside during daylight hours and at the main-mast whilst under way. When alongside, the ''Union Jack'' (as distinct from the Union Flag, often referred to as the Union Jack) is flown from the jackstaff at the bow, and can only be flown under way either to signal a court-martial is in progress or to indicate the presence of an Admiral of the Fleet on-board (including the Lord High Admiral or the Monarch).

The Fleet Review is an irregular tradition of assembling the fleet before the monarch. The first review on record was held in 1400, and the most recent review was held on 28 June 2005 to mark the bi-centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar; 167 ships from many different nations attended with the Royal Navy supplying 67.

Another popular tradition of the British Navy is that they play several cricket matches with local teams, and against the Royal Australian Navy in The Ashes.

There are several less formal traditions including service nicknames and Naval slang. The nicknames include "The Andrew" (of uncertain origin, possibly after a zealous press ganger) and "The Senior Service". The RN has evolved a rich volume of slang, known as "Jack-speak". Nowadays the British sailor is usually "Jack" (or "Jenny") rather than the more historical "Jack Tar". Royal Marines are fondly known as "Bootnecks" or often just as "Royals". The current compendium of Naval slang was brought together by Commander A. Covey-Crump and his name has in itself become the subject of Naval slang; Covey Crump. A game traditionally played by the Navy is the four-player board game "Uckers". This is similar to Ludo and it is regarded as easy to learn, but difficult to play well.

In popular culture

The Royal Navy of the 18th century is depicted in a novel and several films dramatising the voyage and mutiny on the Bounty. The Royal Navy's Napoleonic campaigns of the early 19th century are a popular subject of historical novels. Some of the best-known include Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower chronicles, Julian Stockwin's Kydd series, Showell Styles' The Midshipman Quinn stories, Dudley Pope's Lord Ramage novels and Douglas Reeman's Richard Bolitho novels. Alexander Kent is a pen name of Douglas Reeman who, under his birth name, has written many novels featuring the Royal Navy in the two World Wars. Other well-known novels include Alistair MacLean's ''HMS Ulysses'', Nicholas Monsarrat's ''The Cruel Sea'', and C.S. Forester's ''The Ship'', all set during World War II.

The Navy can also be seen in numerous films. The fictional spy James Bond is 'officially' a commander in the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is featured in ''The Spy Who Loved Me'', when a nuclear ballistic-missile submarine is stolen, and in ''Tomorrow Never Dies'' when a media baron sinks a Royal Navy warship in an attempt to trigger a war between the UK and People's Republic of China. ''Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World'' was based on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. The ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' series of films also includes the Navy as the force pursuing the eponymous pirates. Noël Coward directed and starred in his own film ''In Which We Serve'', which tells the story of the crew of the fictional HMS ''Torrin'' during the Second World War. It was intended as a propaganda film and was released in 1942. Coward starred as the ship's captain, with supporting roles from John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Other examples of full length feature films focusing specifically on the Royal Navy, have been: ''Seagulls over Sorrento''; ''Yangtse Incident'', the story of 's escape down the Yangtze river; ''We Dive at Dawn''; ''The Battle of River Plate''; ''Sink the Bismarck!''; ''The Navy Lark''.

CS Forester's Hornblower novels have been adapted for television, as have Bernard Cornwell's ''Sharpe'' series, which, although primarily involving the Peninsular War of the time, includes several novels involving Richard Sharpe at sea with the Navy. The Royal Navy was the subject of an acclaimed 1970s BBC television drama series, ''Warship'', and of a five-part documentary, ''Shipmates'', that followed the workings of the Royal Navy day to day.

Television documentaries about the Royal Navy include ''Sailor'', about life on the aircraft carrier ; and ''Submarine'', about the submarine captains' training course, 'The Perisher'. A book based on the series, and also called ''Submarine'', was produced by Jonathan Crane.

The popular BBC radio comedy series ''The Navy Lark'' featured a fictitious warship ("HMS ''Troutbridge''") and ran from 1959 to 1977.

See also

List of ship names of the Royal Navy (a full historical list)

The Royal British Legion

The Royal Hospital School

References

External links

Official Website of the Royal Navy

3-Decks Naval History Website

Sea Your History Website from the Royal Naval Museum — Discover detailed information about the Royal Navy in the 20th century.

Royal Marines Museum

List of sunken ships of the Royal Navy on the wrecksite

Navy News – Royal Navy Newspaper

Royal Navy Community Friends

Video clips

Royal Navy YouTube channel

Category:Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) Category:Military of the United Kingdom * Category:Organisations based in the United Kingdom with royal patronage Category:Military units and formations established in 1707 Category:British Armed Forces Category:16th-century establishments in England

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name	Barbra Streisand
background	solo_singer
birth name	Barbara Joan Streisand
birth date	April 24, 1942Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
genre	Broadway, traditional pop, adult contemporary
occupation	Singer-songwriter, actress, film producer, director
years active	1957–present
label	Columbia
spouse	James Brolin (1998-present)
website
children	Jason Gould }}

Barbra Joan Streisand (pronounced ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.

She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

According to the RIAA, Streisand holds the record for the most top ten albums of any female recording artist - a total of 31 since 1963. Streisand has the widest span (46 years) between first and latest top ten albums of any female recording artist. With her 2009 album, ''Love Is the Answer'', she became one of the only artists to achieve number-one albums in five consecutive decades. According to the RIAA, she has released 51 Gold albums, 30 Platinum albums, and 13 Multi-Platinum albums in the United States.

Early life

Barbra Joan Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family, the daughter of Emmanuel and Diana (née Rosen) Streisand. She is the second of two children fathered by Emmanuel (the elder child is Sheldon), who was a respected high school teacher. Fifteen months after Streisand's birth, Emmanuel died of a cerebral hemorrhage and the family went into near-poverty. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and joined the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club. Diana Rosen Streisand remarried Louis Kind in 1949 and gave Streisand a half-sister, the singer Roslyn Kind (Kind is 9 years younger than Barbra).

Barbra Streisand became a nightclub singer while in her teens. She wanted to be an actress and appeared in summer stock and in a number of Off-Off-Broadway productions, including ''Driftwood'' (1959), with then-unknown Joan Rivers. (In her autobiography, Rivers wrote that she played a lesbian with a crush on Streisand's character, but this was later denied by the play's author.) ''Driftwood'' ran for only six weeks. When her boyfriend, Barry Dennen, helped her create a club act—first performed at The Lion, a popular gay nightclub in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1960—she achieved success as a singer. While singing at The Lion for several weeks, she changed her name from Barbara to Barbra. One early appearance outside of New York City was at Enrico Banducci’s hungry i nightclub in San Francisco. In 1961, Streisand appeared at the Town and Country nightclub in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, but her appearance was cut short; the club owner did not appreciate her singing style. Streisand appeared at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit in 1961.

Streisand's first television appearance was on ''The Tonight Show'', then hosted by Jack Paar, in 1961, singing Harold Arlen's "A Sleepin' Bee". Orson Bean, who substituted for Paar that night, had seen the singer perform at a gay bar and booked her for the telecast (Her older brother Sheldon paid NBC for a kinescope film so she could use it in 1961 to promote herself. Decades later the film was preserved through digitizing and is available for viewing on a website). Streisand became a semi-regular on ''PM East/PM West'', a talk/variety series hosted by Mike Wallace, in late 1961. Westinghouse Broadcasting, which aired ''PM East/PM West'' in a select few cities (Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago and San Francisco), has since wiped all the videotapes because of the cost of videotape at the time. Audio segments from some episodes are part of the compilation CD ''Just for the Record'', which went platinum in 1991. The singer said on ''60 Minutes'' in 1991 that 30 years earlier Mike Wallace had been "mean" to her on ''PM East/PM West''. He countered that she had been "self-absorbed." ''60 Minutes'' included the audio of Streisand saying to him in 1961, "I like the fact that you are provoking. But don't provoke ''me''."

In 1962, after several appearances on ''PM East/PM West'', Streisand first appeared on Broadway, in the small but star-making role of Miss Marmelstein in the musical ''I Can Get It for You Wholesale''. Her first album, ''The Barbra Streisand Album'', won two Grammy Awards in 1963. Following her success in ''I Can Get It for You Wholesale'', Streisand made several appearances on ''The Tonight Show'' in 1962 and 1963. Topics covered in her interviews with host Johnny Carson included the empire-waisted dresses that she bought wholesale, to her "crazy" reputation at Erasmus Hall High School. As is the case with Mike Wallace, only audio survives from small portions of her telecast conversations with Carson. It was at about this time that Streisand entered into a long and successful professional relationship with Lee Solters and Sheldon Roskin as her publicists with the firm Solters/Roskin (later Solters/Roskin/Friedman).

Streisand returned to Broadway in 1964 with an acclaimed performance as entertainer Fanny Brice in ''Funny Girl'' at the Winter Garden Theatre. The show introduced two of her signature songs, "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade." Because of the play's overnight success she appeared on the cover of ''Time.'' In 1966, she repeated her success with ''Funny Girl'' in London's West End at the Prince of Wales Theatre. From 1965 to 1967 she appeared in her first four solo television specials.

Career

Singing

Streisand has recorded 35 studio albums, almost all with Columbia Records. Her early works in the 1960s (her debut ''The Barbra Streisand Album'', ''The Second Barbra Streisand Album'', ''The Third Album'', ''My Name Is Barbra'', etc.) are considered classic renditions of theater and cabaret standards, including her slow version of the normally uptempo ''Happy Days Are Here Again''. She performed this in a duet with Judy Garland on ''The Judy Garland Show''. Garland referred to her on the air as one of the last great belters. They also sang ''There's No Business Like Show Business'' with Ethel Merman joining them.

Beginning with ''My Name Is Barbra'', her early albums were often medley-filled keepsakes of her television specials. Starting in 1969, she began attempting more contemporary material, but like many talented singers of the day, she found herself out of her element with rock. Her vocal talents prevailed, and she gained newfound success with the pop and ballad-oriented Richard Perry-produced album ''Stoney End'' in 1971. The title track, written by Laura Nyro, was a major hit for Streisand.

During the 1970s, she was also highly prominent on the pop charts, with Top 10 recordings such as ''The Way We Were'' (US No. 1), ''Evergreen'' (US No. 1), ''No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)'' (1979, with Donna Summer), which as of 2010 is reportedly still the most commercially successful duet,(US No. 1), ''You Don't Bring Me Flowers'' (with Neil Diamond) (US No. 1) and ''The Main Event'' (US No. 3), some of which came from soundtrack recordings of her films. As the 1970s ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the U.S.—only Elvis Presley and The Beatles had sold more albums. In 1980, she released her best-selling effort to date, the Barry Gibb-produced ''Guilty''. The album contained the hits ''Woman In Love'' (which spent several weeks atop the pop charts in the Fall of 1980), ''Guilty,'' and ''What Kind of Fool.''

After years of largely ignoring Broadway and traditional pop music in favor of more contemporary material, Streisand returned to her musical-theater roots with 1985's ''The Broadway Album'', which was unexpectedly successful, holding the coveted No. 1 Billboard position for three straight weeks, and being certified quadruple platinum. The album featured tunes by Rodgers & Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Stephen Sondheim, who was persuaded to rework some of his songs especially for this recording. ''The Broadway Album'' was met with acclaim, including a Grammy nomination for album of the year and, ultimately, handed Streisand her eighth Grammy as Best Female Vocalist. After releasing the live album ''One Voice'' in 1986, Streisand was set to take another musical journey along the Great White Way in 1988. She recorded several cuts for the album under the direction of Rupert Holmes, including ''On My Own'' (from ''Les Misérables''), a medley of ''How Are Things in Glocca Morra?'' and ''Heather on the Hill'' (from ''Finian's Rainbow'' and ''Brigadoon,'' respectively), ''All I Ask of You'' (from ''Phantom of the Opera''), ''Warm All Over'' (from ''The Most Happy Fella'') and an unusual solo version of ''Make Our Garden Grow'' (from ''Candide''). Streisand was not happy with the direction of the project and it was ultimately scrapped. Only ''Warm All Over'' and a reworked, lite FM-friendly version of ''All I Ask of You'' were ever released, the latter appearing on Streisand's 1988 effort, ''Till I Loved You.'' At the beginning of the 1990s, Streisand started focusing on her film directorial efforts and became almost inactive in the recording studio. In 1991, a four-disc box set, ''Just for the Record'', was released. A compilation spanning Streisand's entire career to date, it featured over 70 tracks of live performances, greatest hits, rarities and previously unreleased material.

The following year, Streisand's concert fundraising events helped propel former President Bill Clinton into the spotlight and into office. Streisand later introduced Clinton at his inauguration in 1993. Streisand's music career, however, was largely on hold. A 1992 appearance at an APLA benefit as well as the aforementioned inaugural performance hinted that Streisand was becoming more receptive to the idea of live performances. A tour was suggested, though Streisand would not immediately commit to it, citing her well-known stage fright as well as security concerns. During this time, Streisand finally returned to the recording studio and released ''Back to Broadway'' in June 1993. The album was not as universally lauded as its predecessor, but it did debut at No. 1 on the pop charts (a rare feat for an artist of Streisand's age, especially given that it relegated Janet Jackson's ''Janet'' to the No. 2 spot). One of the album's highlights was a medley of ''I Have A Love/One Hand, One Heart,'' a duet with Johnny Mathis, who Streisand said is one of her favorite singers.

In 1993, ''New York Times'' music critic Stephen Holden wrote that Streisand "enjoys a cultural status that only one other American entertainer, Frank Sinatra, has achieved in the last half century." In September 1993, Streisand announced her first public concert appearances in 27 years. What began as a two-night New Year's event at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas eventually led to a multi-city tour in the summer of 1994. Tickets to the tour were sold out in under one hour. Streisand also appeared on the covers of major magazines in anticipation of what ''Time magazine'' named "The Music Event of the Century." The tour was one of the biggest all-media merchandise parlays in history. Ticket prices ranged from US$50 to US$1,500 – making Streisand the highest-paid concert performer in history. ''Barbra Streisand: The Concert'' went on to be the top-grossing concert of the year and earned five Emmy Awards and the Peabody Award, while the taped broadcast on HBO is, to date, the highest-rated concert special in HBO's 30-year history. Following the tour's conclusion, Streisand once again kept a low profile musically, instead focusing her efforts on acting and directing duties as well as a burgeoning romance with actor James Brolin.

In 1997, she finally returned to the recording studio, releasing ''Higher Ground,'' a collection of songs of a loosely-inspirational nature which also featured a duet with Celine Dion. The album received generally favorable reviews and, remarkably, once again debuted at No. 1 on the pop charts. Following her marriage to Brolin in 1998, Streisand recorded an album of love songs entitled ''A Love Like Ours'' the following year. Reviews were mixed, with many critics carping about the somewhat syrupy sentiments and overly-lush arrangements; however, it did produce a modest hit for Streisand in the country-tinged ''If You Ever Leave Me,'' a duet with Vince Gill.

On New Year's Eve 1999, Streisand returned to the concert stage, with the highest-grossing single concert in Las Vegas history to date. At the end of the millennium, she was the number-one female singer in the U.S., with at least two No. 1 albums in each decade since she began performing. A two-disc live album of the concert entitled ''Timeless: Live in Concert'' was released in 2000. Streisand performed versions of the "Timeless" concert in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, in early 2000. In advance of four concerts (two each in Los Angeles and New York) in September 2000, Streisand announced she was retiring from paying public concerts. Her performance of the song ''People'' was broadcast on the Internet via America Online.

Streisand's most-recent albums have been ''Christmas Memories'' (2001), a somewhat somber collection of holiday songs (which felt entirely—albeit unintentionally—appropriate in the early post-9/11 days), and ''The Movie Album'' (2003), featuring famous film themes and backed by a large symphony orchestra. ''Guilty Pleasures'' (called ''Guilty Too'' in the UK), a collaboration with Barry Gibb and a sequel to their ''Guilty,'' was released worldwide in 2005.

In February 2006, Streisand recorded the song ''Smile'' alongside Tony Bennett at Streisand's Malibu home. The song is included on Tony Bennett's 80th birthday album, ''Duets.'' In September 2006, the pair filmed a live performance of the song for a special directed by Rob Marshall entitled ''Tony Bennett: An American Classic.'' The special aired on NBC November 21, 2006, and was released on DVD the same day. Streisand's duet with Bennett opened the special. In 2006, Streisand announced her intent to tour again, in an effort to raise money and awareness for multiple issues. After four days of rehearsal at the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, New Jersey, the tour began on October 4 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, continued with a featured stop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (this was the concert Streisand chose to film for a TV special), and concluded at Staples Center in Los Angeles on November 20, 2006. Special guests Il Divo were interwoven throughout the show. On stage closing night, Streisand hinted that six more concerts may follow on foreign soil. The show was known as ''Streisand: The Tour.''

Streisand's 20-concert tour set box-office records. At the age of 64, well past the prime of most performers, she grossed US$92,457,062 and set house gross records in 14 of the 16 arenas played on the tour. She set the third-place record for her October 9, 2006, show at Madison Square Garden, the first- and second-place records of which are held by her two shows in September 2000. She set the second-place record at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, with her December 31, 1999, show being the house record and the highest-grossing concert of all time. This led many people to openly criticize Streisand for price gouging, as many tickets sold for upwards of US$1,000.

A collection of performances culled from different stops on this tour, ''Live in Concert 2006,'' debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, making it Streisand's 29th Top 10 album. In the summer of 2007, Streisand gave concerts for the first time in continental Europe. The first concert took place in Zürich (June 18), then Vienna (June 22), Paris (June 26), Berlin (June 30), Stockholm (July 4, canceled), Manchester (July 10) and Celbridge, near Dublin (July 14), followed by three concerts in London (July 18, 22 and 25), the only European city where Streisand had performed before 2007. Tickets for the London dates cost between £100.00 and GB£1,500.00 and for the Ireland date between €118 and €500. The tour included a 58-piece orchestra.

In February 2008, ''Forbes'' listed Streisand as the No. 2 earning female musician, between June 2006 and June 2007, with earnings of about US$60 million. Although Streisand's range has changed with time and her voice has deepened over the years, her vocal prowess has remained remarkably secure for a singer whose career has endured for nearly half a century. Streisand is a contralto or possibly a mezzo-soprano who has a range consisting of well over two octaves from “low E to a high G and probably a bit more in either direction.” On November 17, 2008, Streisand returned to the studio to begin recording what would be her sixty-third album and it was announced that Diana Krall was producing the album. Streisand is one of the recipients of the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors. On December 7, 2008, she visited the White House as part of the ceremonies.

On April 25, 2009, CBS aired Streisand's latest TV special, ''Streisand: Live In Concert'', highlighting the aforementioned featured stop from her 2006 North American tour, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On September 26, 2009, Streisand performed a one-night-only show at the Village Vanguard in New York City's Greenwich Village. This performance was later released on DVD as ''One Night Only Barbra Streisand and Quartet at The Village Vanguard.'' On September 29, 2009, Streisand and Columbia Records released her newest studio album, ''Love is the Answer.'' produced by Diana Krall. On October 2, 2009, Streisand made her British television performance debut with an interview on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross to promote the album. This album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and registered her biggest weekly sales since 1997, making Streisand the only artist in history to achieve No. 1 albums in five different decades.

On February 1, 2010, Streisand joined over 80 other artists in recording a new version of the 1985 charity single "We Are the World." Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie planned to release the new version to mark the 25th anniversary of its original recording. These plans changed, however, in view of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, and on February 12, the song, now called "We Are the World 25 for Haiti," made its debut as a charity single to support relief aid for the beleaguered island nation.

Streisand was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year on February 11, 2011, two days prior to the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Streisand is one of many singers who uses teleprompters during their live performances. Streisand has defended her choice in using teleprompters to display lyrics and, sometimes, banter.

Acting

Her first film was a reprise of her Broadway hit, ''Funny Girl'' (1968), an artistic and commercial success directed by Hollywood veteran William Wyler. Streisand won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, sharing it with Katharine Hepburn (''The Lion in Winter''), the only time there has been a tie in this Oscar category. Her next two movies were also based on musicals, Jerry Herman's ''Hello, Dolly!'', directed by Gene Kelly (1969), and Alan Jay Lerner's and Burton Lane's ''On a Clear Day You Can See Forever'', directed by Vincente Minnelli (1970), while her fourth film was based on the Broadway play ''The Owl and the Pussycat'' (1970).

During the 1970s, Streisand starred in several screwball comedies, including ''What's Up, Doc?'' (1972) and ''The Main Event'' (1979), both co-starring Ryan O'Neal, and ''For Pete's Sake'' (1974) with Michael Sarrazin. One of her most famous roles during this period was in the drama ''The Way We Were'' (1973) with Robert Redford, for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She earned her second Academy Award for Best Original Song as composer (together with lyricist Paul Williams) for the song "Evergreen", from ''A Star Is Born'' in 1976.

Along with Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and later Steve McQueen, Streisand formed First Artists Production Company in 1969, so the actors could secure properties and develop movie projects for themselves. Streisand's initial outing with First Artists was ''Up the Sandbox'' (1972).

From a period beginning in 1969 and ending in 1980, Streisand appeared in the annual motion picture exhibitors poll of Top 10 Box Office attractions a total of 10 times, often as the only woman on the list. After the commercially disappointing ''All Night Long'' in 1981, Streisand's film output decreased considerably. She has only acted in six films since.

Streisand produced a number of her own films, setting up Barwood Films in 1972. For ''Yentl'' (1983), she was producer, director, and star, an experience she repeated for ''The Prince of Tides'' (1991) and ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'' (1996). There was controversy when ''Yentl'' received five Academy Award nominations, but none for the major categories of Best Picture, Actress, or Director. ''The Prince of Tides'' received even more Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but the director was not nominated. Streisand also scripted "Yentl", something she is not always given credit for. According to New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal in an interview (story begins at minute 16) with Allan Wolper, "the one thing that makes Barbra Streisand crazy is when nobody gives her the credit for having written 'Yentl'."

In 2004, Streisand made a return to film acting, after an eight-year hiatus, in the comedy ''Meet the Fockers'' (a sequel to ''Meet the Parents''), playing opposite Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Blythe Danner and Robert De Niro.

In 2005, Streisand's Barwood Films, Gary Smith, and Sonny Murray purchased the rights to Simon Mawer's book ''Mendel's Dwarf''. In December 2008, she stated that she was considering directing an adaptation of Larry Kramer's play ''The Normal Heart'', a project she has worked on since the mid-1990s In 2009, Andrew Lloyd Webber stated that Streisand was one of several actresses (alongside Meryl Streep and Glenn Close) who were interested in playing the role of Norma Desmond in the film adaptation of Webber's musical version of ''Sunset Boulevard''

In December 2010, Streisand appeared in ''Little Fockers'', the third film from the ''Meet the Parents trilogy''. She reprised the role of Roz Focker alongside Dustin Hoffman.

On 4 January 2011, the ''New York Post'' reported that Streisand was in negotiations to produce, direct, and star in a new film version of ''Gypsy.'' In an interview with the ''New York Post'', Arthur Laurents said: "We've talked about it a lot, and she knows what she's doing. She has my approval." He said that he would not write the screenplay. The following day, the ''New York Times'' reported that Arthur Laurents clarified in a telephonic interview that Streisand would not direct the film "but playing Rose is enough to make her happy." Streisand's spokesperson confirmed that "there have been conversations".

On 28 January 2011, ''The Hollywood Reporter'' announced that Paramount Pictures has given the road-trip comedy, ''My Mother's Curse,'' the green light to begin shooting, with Streisand and Seth Rogen playing mother and son. Anne Fletcher is slated to direct the project with a script by Dan Fogelman. Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn will produce it with Evan Goldberg. Executive producers include Streisand, Rogen, Fogelman, and David Ellison, whose Skydance will co-finance the pic. Shooting began in spring of 2011 and wrapped in July. In August the Internet Movie Database began listing the film with the new title ''Guilt Trip''. The film is set for a November 2012 release (originally it was slated to release in March 2012).

Personal life

Marriages and family

Streisand has been married twice. Her first husband was actor Elliott Gould, to whom she was married from 1963 until 1971. They had one child, Jason Gould, who would go on to star as her on-screen son in ''The Prince of Tides''. Her second husband is actor James Brolin, whom she married on July 1, 1998. While they have no children together, Brolin has two children from his first marriage, including Academy Award-nominated actor Josh Brolin, and one child from his second marriage. Both of her husbands starred in the 1970s conspiracy sci-fi thriller ''Capricorn One''.

Jon Peters' daughters, Caleigh Peters and Skye Peters, are her goddaughters.

Streisand shares a birthday with Shirley MacLaine, and they celebrate together every year.

Name

Streisand changed her name from Barbara to Barbra because, she said, "I hated the name, but I refused to change it." Streisand further explained, "Well, I was 18 and I wanted to be unique, but I didn't want to change my name because that was too false. You know, people were saying you could be Joanie Sands, or something like that. [My middle name is Joan.] And I said, 'No, let's see, if I take out the 'a,' it's still 'Barbara,' but it's unique." A 1967 biography with a concert program said, "the spelling of her first name is an instance of partial rebellion: she was advised to change her last name and retaliated by dropping an “a” from the first instead."

Politics

Streisand has long been an active supporter of the Democratic Party and many of their causes. Streisand said, "The Democrats have always been the party of working people and minorities. I've always identified with the minorities."

In 1971, Streisand was one of the celebrities listed on President Richard Nixon's infamous Enemies List.

Philanthropy

Streisand has personally raised $25 million for organizations through her live performances. The Streisand Foundation, established in 1986, has contributed over $16 million through nearly 1,000 grants to "national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues and nuclear disarmament."

In 2006, Streisand donated $1 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation in support of former President Bill Clinton’s climate change initiative.

In 2008, Streisand gifted $5 million to endow the Barbra Streisand Women's Cardiovascular Research and Education Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Women's Heart Center. In September that year, ''Parade'' magazine included Streisand on their Giving Back Fund's second annual Giving Back 30 survey, "a ranking of the celebrities who have made the largest donations to charity in 2007 according to public records", as the third most generous celebrity. The Giving Back Fund claimed Streisand donated $11 million, which The Streisand Foundation distributed.

At Julien’s Auctions in October 2009, Streisand, a long-time collector of art and furniture, sold 526 items with all the proceeds going to her foundation. Items included a costume from ''Funny Lady'' and a vintage dental cabinet purchased by the performer at 18 years old. The sale’s most valuable lot was a painting by Kees van Dongen.

References in popular culture

On television

The most memorable parody of Streisand's iconic status has been on the sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'' in the recurring skit ''Coffee Talk'' where character Linda Richman, played by Mike Myers, hosts a talk show dedicated to, among other things, the adoration of Streisand. Streisand, in turn, made an unannounced guest appearance on the show, surprising Myers and guests, Madonna and Roseanne Barr. Mike Myers also appeared as the Linda Richman character on stage with Streisand at her 1994 MGM Grand concert, as well as a few of the 1994 Streisand tour shows.

Streisand is frequently mentioned in the sitcom "The Nanny" as Fran Fine states she is her leader. Both Fran and her mother adore Streisand, and often compete in who loves her more.

Streisand is mentioned in the sitcom ''Will & Grace'', particularly by the character Jack McFarland. Songs made famous by Streisand, such as "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" from ''Yentl'' and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from ''The Broadway Album'' are reproduced by characters in the show.

The sitcom ''Friends'' refers to Streisand in at least two episodes. In "The One Where Chandler Can't Remember Which Sister", Monica names a sandwich at her 1950s-styled restaurant after Barbra Streisand. A soup is also named after Streisand's movie ''Yentl''. Meanwhile, in "The One After 'I Do'", Phoebe pretends she is pregnant with James Brolin's baby, to which Chandler responds "[A]s in Barbra Streisand's husband, James Brolin?" In the same episode, Gould appears on the show as Ross and Monica's father.

In an episode of ''Absolutely Fabulous'' ("Small Opening"), Beau visits the Monsoon household with her husband Marshall. In another one of their schemes, they have become Jewish with Beau wearing one of Streisand's wigs. She takes the wig off and begins to channel Barbra and says "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" and "People."

At least four episodes of the animated sitcom ''The Simpsons'' refer to Streisand. Outside Springfield Elementary School, announcing Lisa's jazz concert and noting tickets have been sold out, is an advertisement for a Streisand concert in the same venue for the following day, with tickets still on sale. In "Fear of Flying", after Marge undergoes therapy, she informs the therapist that whenever she hears the wind blow, she'll hear it saying "Lowenstein", Streisand's therapist character in ''The Prince of Tides'', even though Marge's therapist is named Zweig. Another reference comes in "Sleeping with the Enemy" when Bart exclaims after seeing Lisa make a snow-angel in a cake on the kitchen table, "At least she's not singing Streisand", in reference to Nelson Muntz singing "Papa Can You Hear Me?" from ''Yentl'' earlier in the episode. In "Simple Simpson", a patriotic country singer says that Streisand is unpatriotic and could be pleased by spitting on the flag and strangling a bald eagle.

thumb|180px|"Mecha Streisand" as portrayed in the animated show ''South Park''. Another enduring satirical reference is in the animated series ''South Park'', most notably in the episode "Mecha-Streisand", where Streisand is portrayed as a self-important, evil, gigantic robotic dinosaur with a terrible singing voice about to conquer the universe before being defeated by Robert Smith of The Cure. On another occasion, the Halloween episode "Spookyfish" is promoted for a week as being done in "Spooky-Vision", which involves Streisand's face seen at times during the episode in the four corners of the screen. At the end of the feature film ''South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,'' her name is used as a powerful curse word, a gag repeated in the episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants". The Mecha-Streisand character made a return in the Season 14 episodes "200" and "201", as one of several celebrities the show had lampooned over the years.

In the ''Sex and the City'' episode "Ex in the City", protagonist Carrie Bradshaw likens herself and her lovelife to that of Streisand's character, Katie Morosky in ''The Way We Were'' before breaking into a rendition of the title song.

In the 2002–04 Icebox.com cartoon and animated TV series ''Queer Duck'', the title character is obsessed with Streisand. He undergoes conversion therapy at a Christian camp to be "made" straight, but Streisand's magic nose returns him to his former sexual orientation.

In the ''American Dad!'' episode "In Country...Club", Roger prepares to watch a Streisand special where the entertainer sings the collected works of Celine Dion in Las Vegas.

In Season 1 Episode 12 of ''Boston Legal'', Denny Crane boasts that he once had a threesome with Shirley Schmidt and Barbra Streisand. Schmidt corrects him by reminding him that "Barbra Streisand" was actually a female impersonator.

In the ''Family Guy'' episode "Mind Over Murder", Lois sings a cabaret act with "Don't Rain on My Parade" — originally sung by Streisand in ''Funny Girl'' — only slowed down and jazzier, as an act of defiance to Peter. In "Stewie Kills Lois", Peter receives life insurance after Lois' apparent death, and claims that he has more money than Streisand. This was followed by a cut scene showing Streisand blowing money out of her nose. In "Wasted Talent", Streisand and husband James Brolin are shown sitting together at the dinner table, with Streisand remarking "I'm glad I married a regular person and not a celebrity".

Streisand is referenced frequently on the Fox TV musical series ''Glee''. The character Rachel (Lea Michele) mentions that Streisand refused to alter her nose in order to become famous in the show's third episode "Acafellas". Also, in the mid-season finale of ''Glee'', Rachel sings the Streisand anthem "Don't Rain on My Parade". In the episode "Hell-O", she says that she will be heartbroken for life, "Like Barbra in ''The Way We Were''." In the same episode, Jesse St. James (Jonathan Groff) criticizes Rachel's performance of "Don't Rain on My Parade" by saying that she "lacked Barbra's emotional depth." In the episode "Theatricality", Rachel is spying on the opposing team's dance rehearsal when the director, Shelby Corcoran (Idina Menzel), expresses dissatisfaction at the team's routine. She demonstrates how it's done with the title song from ''Funny Girl'', and Rachel, sitting in the audience, whispers to her friend, "Exactly what I would have done — Barbra. I could do it in my sleep." On the episode Born This Way Barbara is mentioned when Rachel is debating whether or not to get a nose job, Kurt Hummel and the rest of the glee club set up a "Barbra-vention" of a flashmob to the popular hit "Barbra Streisand" by Duck Sauce. The characters of Kurt and Rachel also sang the Get Happy/Happy Days are Here Again duet originally heard during Streisand's 1963 appearance with Judy Garland on Garland's weekly TV series.

When ''Glee'' won the prize for "Best TV Series-Comedy Or Musical" at the 2010 Golden Globe Awards, creator Ryan Murphy quipped on stage, "Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press and Miss Barbra Streisand".

On film

In movies, Streisand is remembered as the favorite of the character Howard Brackett, played by Kevin Kline, who finally admits to being gay while standing at the altar in the 1997 romantic comedy ''In & Out''. His unfortunate bride-to-be, played by Joan Cusack, cries out in frustration to family and friends present, "Does anybody here KNOW how many times I've had to sit through ''Funny Lady''?" In an earlier scene, Howard is taunted by a friend during an argument at a bar with a jeering, "The studio thought that Barbra was too ol-l-ld to play ''Yentl''." The film also mentions the album ''Color Me Barbra''. Barbra's signature tune, "People", is played by a school orchestra in honor of teacher Howard as the story wraps at the end of the credits. This and similar references refer to her popularity among gay men.

In the 1980 musical film ''Fame'', one of the characters, Mrs. Finsecker, announces that Barbra Streisand did not have to change her name to get to the top. Also, Doris Finsecker, played by Maureen Teefy, sings "The Way We Were" for her audition to get into the drama department.

In the 1988 comedy, BIG, Tom Hanks goes home and to prove to his mother that he is her "little" boy he sings the first line of her favorite song, "Memories, like the corner of my mind..." from "The Way We Were."

In the 1993 romantic comedy ''Mrs. Doubtfire'', Robin Williams, while trying different looks to apply to the Mrs. Doubtfire character that he portrays, uses a wig "a la Streisand" and sings some lines from "Don't Rain on My Parade".

In the 1996 comedy "The Associate", Whoopi Goldberg plays a business woman, Laurel Ayers, who creates a business associate, Robert S. Cutty, who is said to have known and dated Streisand. In addition to having an autographed picture of Streisand in her office, Ayers also has a cross-dressing friend who dresses up to resemble Streisand throughout the film.

In the 1998 film adaptation of the novel ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' a teenage runaway played by Christina Ricci paints images of Streisand while being administered large amounts of LSD by Hunter Thompson's Samoan attorney.

In the 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut based on the TV series, Cartman shouted out Barbra Streisand's name and shot electricity out of his hands. She is also mentioned in a relationship conversation between the characters of Satan and Saddam Hussein.

In the 2000 remake of the comedy ''Bedazzled'', the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley) tells Elliot (Brendan Fraser): "It's not easy being the Barbra Streisand of evil, you know."

The characters Carla and Connie, as aspiring song-and-dance acts in the 2004 comedy ''Connie and Carla'', include four Streisand references. They sing "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" and "Memory" at an airport lounge and "Don't Rain on My Parade" onstage in a gay bar, and talk about the plot of ''Yentl'' at the climax of the film after they ask how many in their audience have seen the movie (everyone raised their hands).

In the 2005 animated feature ''Chicken Little'', Chicken's best friend Runt's mom says, after she thinks he is lying about seeing an alien spaceship, "Don't make me take away your Streisand collection!" and Runt returns with, "Mother, you leave Barbra out of this!" Also, she is referred to many times in the series "Gilmore Girls"

In music

Sound clips of Streisand's heated exchange with a supporter of former U.S. president George W. Bush were sampled in the 2009 Lucian Piane dance song "Bale Out", making it sound as if she were arguing with actor Christian Bale (whose recorded outbursts during the filming of ''Terminator Salvation'' were the centerpiece of the song).

"Barbra Streisand" is a disco house song by American-Canadian DJ duo Duck Sauce. It was released on 10 September 2010. The song peaked at number one in Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Austria. It became a top ten hit in Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK.

Her name consists both the title and the complete lyrics of Duck Sauce's 2010 disco house song "Barbra Streisand", which reached number 1 in the UK Dance charts. It also reached number 1 in several other countries.

On stage

Daniel Stern's 2003 Off-Broadway play ''Barbra's Wedding'' was set against the backdrop of Streisand's 1998 wedding to James Brolin.

The 2005 Broadway musical ''Spamalot'' carries the song "You won't succeed on Broadway" which references lines from "People" and "Papa, Can You Hear Me?".

The 2008 Broadway musical "Title of show" has a line where the character, Susan, was suggesting names for the title of the show. She threw out the name "Color Me Susan", a reference to Barbra's Color Me Barbra.

"Streisand effect"

In 2003, Streisand sued aerial photographer Kenneth Adelman for displaying a photograph of her Malibu, California home, along with other photos of the California coastline. Her suit was dismissed under the anti-SLAPP provisions of California law. Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term "Streisand effect" in January 2005 to describe the publicity generated by Streisand's efforts to suppress the publication of the photograph.

Awards

In 1984, Streisand was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. She also received the National Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008. She was inducted as an officer of France's Legion of Honour in 2007.

Music awards

Streisand's works have been nominated for over 57 Grammy Awards; she won 15 of these, including two special awards. She has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame three times. In 2011, she is honored as MusiCares Person of the Year by the Grammy Foundation.

Album of the Year Best Female Vocal Performance Best Female Vocal Performance Best Female Vocal Performance Best Contemporary-Pop Vocal Performance AGVA Grammy Awards Singing Star of the Year People's Choice Awards rowspan="5" Best Pop Female Vocal Performance Singing Star of the Year rowspan="7" rowspan="3" rowspan="2" Singing Star of the Year People's Choice Awards rowspan="5" Best Pop Vocal Female Performance People's Choice Awards rowspan="16"Grammy Legend Award Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award rowspan="2" rowspan="3" rowspan="2" Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy Hall of Fame Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album

Year !! Award !! Category !! Work !! Result
rowspan="3"	1963	Grammy Awards	|	''The Barbra Streisand Album''
Best Female Vocal Performance
Record of the Year	Happy Days Are Here Again#Barbra Streisand version>Happy Days Are Here Again"
rowspan="3"	1964			''People'' ||
Album of the Year
Record of the Year
rowspan="2"	1965		|	''My Name Is Barbra''
Album of the Year
rowspan="2"	1966		|	''Color Me Barbra''
Album of the Year
1968	|		Funny Girl (film)>Funny Girl'' Soundtrack
1970	AGVA Georgie Award ||	Entertainer of the Year	—
rowspan="2"	1972	|	Best Pop Female Vocal Performance	"Sweet Inspiration / Where You Lead"
AGVA Georgie Award	|	—
1975	|		Favorite Female Singer of the Year
1976	Grammy Awards ||	Best Classical Vocal Soloist Performance	''Classical Barbra''
rowspan="5"	1977		"Evergreen" (from ''A Star Is Born'') ||
Song of the Year
Record of the Year
Best Original Score – Motion Picture or Television Special
AGVA Georgie Award	|	—
1978	Grammy Awards ||	Best Pop Female Vocal Performance	You Don't Bring Me Flowers (song)	You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (with Neil Diamond) |>
rowspan="2"	1979	Record of the Year
rowspan="2"	Best Pop Vocal Performance – Duo, Group, or Chorus
rowspan="5"	1980	Guilty (Barbra Streisand album)	Guilty'' (with Barry Gibb) |>
Album of the Year
Record of the Year	"Woman in Love"
Best Pop Vocal Female Performance
AGVA Georgie Awards	|	—
1985	|		Favorite All-Around Female Entertainer
rowspan="3"	1986	Grammy Awards ||	Best Pop Vocal Female Performance	''The Broadway Album''
Album of the Year
Best Instrumental Arrangement Acompanying Vocal	"Being Alive"
rowspan="2"	1987		''One Voice'' ||
Best Music Video Performance
1988	|	Favorite All-Time Musical Performer	—
1991	Grammy Awards ||	Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance	"Warm All Over"
1992	|	—	Special award
1993	|	''Back to Broadway''
rowspan="3"	1994	|	—	Special award
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance	''Barbra: The Concert''
Best Pop Vocal Female Performance	"Ordinary Miracles"
rowspan="2"	1997	Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals ||	Tell Him (Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion song)>Tell Him" (with Celine Dion)
"I Finally Found Someone" (with Bryan Adams)
2000	Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album ||	''Timeless – Live In Concert''
2002	''Christmas Memories''
2003	''The Movie Album''
2004	Grammy Hall of Fame ||	Funny Girl (musical)>Funny Girl'' (Barbra Streisand and Sydney Chaplin)	Inducted
2006	''The Barbra Streisand Album''
2007	|	''Live in Concert 2006''
2008	|	The Way We Were (song)>The Way We Were"	Inducted
2011	|	Love Is the Answer (album)>Love Is the Answer''

Film awards

Streisand has won 2 Academy Awards (Oscar) against 5 nominations, 2 for acting, 2 for song writing and 1 for Best Picture,

Best Actress ''Hello, Dolly Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) Academy Awards Henrietta World Film Favorite Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) Academy Awards rowspan="3" Henrietta World Film Favorite Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) Best Actress in Motion Picture (Drama) Academy Awards Academy Awards Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement

Year !! Award !! Category !! Work !! Result
rowspan="2"	1969	Academy Awards		''Funny Girl'' ||
rowspan="5"	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical)
rowspan="2"	1970		(film)	Hello, Dolly!''
Henrietta Award	Henrietta World Film Favorite	—
rowspan="2"	1971	|	The Owl and the Pussycat (film)>The Owl and the Pussycat''
Henrietta World Film Favorite	—
rowspan="2"	1974	|	Best Actress	''The Way We Were''
rowspan="3"	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama)
1975	|	—	Special award
1976	|	''Funny Lady''
rowspan="3"	1977	|	Best Original Song	Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)	Evergreen" (from ''A Star Is Born'') |>
rowspan="6"	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical)
Best Original Song
1978	|	—	Special award
rowspan="2"	1984		''Yentl'' ||
Best Director (Motion Picture)
1988	|	Nuts (film)>Nuts''
rowspan="2"	1992	|	Best Picture	''The Prince of Tides''
Golden Globe Awards	Best Director (Motion Picture)
rowspan="3"	1997	|	Best Original Song	"I Finally Found Someone" (from ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'')
rowspan="3"	Golden Globe Awards	|	''The Mirror Has Two Faces''
Best Original Song	"I Finally Found Someone" (from ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'')
2000	|	—	Special award

Appearances

Broadway performances

Year !! Title !! Notes
1961–1963	''I Can Get It for You Wholesale''	Nominated—Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical
1964–1965	Funny Girl (musical)>Funny Girl''

West End performances

Year !! Title !! Notes
1966	Funny Girl (musical)>Funny Girl''	April 13, 1966 – July 16, 1966 at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London.

Television specials

Year !! Title !! Notes
1965	''My Name Is Barbra''	Aired April 28, 1965
1966	Color Me Barbra'' >
1967	''The Belle of 14th Street''
1968	''A Happening in Central Park''
1973	''Barbra Streisand...And Other Musical Instruments''
1975	''Funny Girl to Funny Lady''
1976	''Barbra: With One More Look at You''
1983	''A Film Is Born: The Making of 'Yentl'''
1986	''Putting it Together: The Making of The Broadway Album''
1987	One Voice (Barbra Streisand album)>One Voice''
1994	''Barbra Streisand: The Concert''
2001	''Barbra Streisand: Timeless''
2009	''Streisand: Live in Concert''
2009	''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross''

Tours and live performances

North America ''Barbra Streisand: The Concert Tour'' ''Timeless: Live in Concert Tour'' ''Streisand: The Tour''

Year !! Title !! Continents !! Box-office benefits !! Total audience
1966	''An Evening with Barbra Streisand (Tour)''	|	$480,000	60,000
1994	|	North America and Europe	$50 million	400,000
2000	|	North America and Oceania	$70 million	200,000
2006–2007	|	North America and Europe	$119.5 million	425,000

Discography

1963: ''The Barbra Streisand Album''

1963: ''The Second Barbra Streisand Album''

1964: ''The Third Album''

1964: ''Funny Girl''

1964: ''People''

1965: ''My Name Is Barbra''

1965: ''My Name Is Barbra, Two...''

1966: ''Color Me Barbra''

1966: ''Je m'appelle Barbra''

1967: ''Simply Streisand''

1967: ''A Christmas Album''

1969: ''What About Today?''

1971: ''Stoney End''

1971: ''Barbra Joan Streisand''

1972: ''Live Concert at the Forum''

1973: ''Barbra Streisand...And Other Musical Instruments''

1974: ''The Way We Were''

1974: ''ButterFly''

1975: ''Lazy Afternoon''

1976: ''Classical Barbra''

1977: ''Streisand Superman''

1978: ''Songbird''

1979: ''Wet''

1979: ''The Main Event (1979 film)''

1980: ''Guilty''

1981: ''Memories''

1983: ''Yentl - Motion picture soundtrack''

1984: ''Emotion''

1985: ''The Broadway Album''

1986: ''One Voice - Live Concert''

1988: ''Till I Loved You''

1989: ''Barbra Streisand - A Collection: Greatest Hits & More''

1993: ''Back to Broadway''

1997: ''Higher Ground''

1999: ''A Love Like Ours''

2001: ''Christmas Memories''

2003: ''The Movie Album''

2005: ''Guilty Pleasures''

2009: ''Love Is the Answer''

2011: ''What Matters Most''

Filmography

! Year	! Title	! Role	! Notes
1968		Fanny Brice	Academy Award for Best Actress Tied with Katharine Hepburn for ''The Lion in Winter''David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress Tied with Mia Farrow for ''Rosemary's Baby''Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyNominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role also for ''Hello, Dolly!''
1969		Dolly Levi
		Daisy Gamble / Melinda Tentres
	Doris Wilgus/Wadsworth/Wellington/Waverly	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
		Judy Maxwell
''Up the Sandbox''	Margaret Reynolds
1973	''The Way We Were''	Katie Morosky	David di Donatello for Best Actress
1974		Henrietta 'Henry' Robbins
1975	''[[Funny Lady''	Fanny Brice	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1976		Esther Hoffman Howard	Academy Award for Best Original Song Shared with Paul Williams (lyrics) for the song "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)"Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyGolden Globe Award for Best Original Song Shared with Paul Williams (lyrics) for the song "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)"Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Film Music Shared with Paul Williams, Kenny Ascher, Rupert Holmes, Leon Russell, Kenny Loggins, Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, Donna Weiss
1979		Hillary Kramer
1981		Cheryl Gibbons	Nominated-Razzie Award for Worst Actress
1983		Yentl/Anshel
1987		Claudia Faith Draper	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
1991	''The Prince of Tides''	Dr. Susan Lowenstein	(also director and producer)Nominated—Academy Award for Best Picture Shared with Andrew S. KarschNominated—Directors Guild of America AwardNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Director
1996	''The Mirror Has Two Faces''	Rose Morgan	(also director and producer)Nominated—Academy Award for Best Original Song Shared with Marvin Hamlisch, Robert John Lange and Bryan Adams for the song "I Finally Found Someone"Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song Shared with Marvin Hamlisch, Robert John Lange and Bryan Adams for the song "I Finally Found Someone"
2004	''Meet the Fockers''	Roz Focker
2010	''Little Fockers''	Roz Focker	Nominated-Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress
2012	''Guilt Trip''	Joyce Brewster

References

Further reading

External links

Barbra-Archives.com

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