Barbra Streisand has revealed that she has no plans to return to the big screen anytime soon.
The EGOT winner, who hasn’t starred in a movie in more than a decade, recently told People Magazine that the movie-making process can be tiring.
“I mean, it was 2009 that I was fighting for the rights to play Gypsy,” she said. “In other words, it gets exhausting, trying to come up with the structure of the movie and then have it not happen.”
But Streisand admitted that if she could have made her movies, she “never would’ve written a book. I had such good movies to make, meaning they were about things I cared about, very interesting subjects.”
The actress-singer has tried to get several projects made over the years, including The Normal Heart, Gypsy and a sequel to The Way We Were. She recently said on The Howard Stern Show that her movie musical adaptation about burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee, based on the Stephen Sondheim musical, hasn’t panned out yet because Sondheim wouldn’t let her star in and direct the film, telling her the role was “too difficult” to do both.
Streisand landed her first role in 1968’s Funny Girl, for which she won an Oscar for best actress in a leading role. She has also starred in Hello, Dolly!, The Way We Were, The Mirror Has Two Faces, A Star Is Born, Yentl and The Guilt Trip.
Following a successful entertainment career, the multihyphenate, who recently released her memoir My Name Is Barbra, said she also just gets “lazy.”
“Why did I only make 19 movies in my lifetime? I had many movies that I wanted to make, and then I get lazy,” Streisand explained. “I go, ‘Oh yeah, to do this one, I have to have all these fittings for period clothes. This one, I’d have to live in Arkansas to do this one.’ I don’t know. It’s complicated, but I am complicated, I guess… I get lazy.”
She added, “Bette Davis made 80 movies. I made 19. She’s a wonderful actress and she liked working. I like time off.”
