Why Barbra Streisand Threatened to Replace Mandy Patinkin in ‘Yentl?’ His Problematic Behavior on the Set, Revealed

Respect Mandy Patinkin: One time star of stage and screen, Inigo Montoya, and legendary performer of “I’m Singing in the Bathtub.”

He is an Emmy and Tony award winner, a Golden Globe nominee, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He contributed his voice to a children’s musical book for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which provided funding for paralysis and spinal cord injury repair research, and stood up for writers during the 2023 WGA strike. It was all great. Dead Like Me and do all that, according to Barbra Streisand, he also really wanted to kiss Yentl.

This revelation of Patinkin’s alleged behavior on the set of Yentlshared in Streisand’s hot new memoir My name is Barbra, is more than a little trouble. In memory of Per Streisand, Patinkin, who played Avigdor in the 1983 Academy Award-winning musical, began to struggle to connect with her character during a scene, staring at Streisand’s forehead rather than making eye contact. Addressing his performance privately, Patinkin complained that he was disappointed that he and Streisand did not have an affair – which he was absolutely certain would happen.

Streisand, who directed and starred in other, went on to describe shutting Patinkin down, telling him she would have no problem replacing him and reshooting his scenes with another actor. She also recalled changing the script moving forward to avoid playing in an intimate scene with Patinkin, who she said made her life “miserable for months”.

Wild. These are the problems that we ordinary people will never have to deal with. No matter how much of a pain you are at work, it will never hurt to change the path of a fictional character’s love life. That’s the kind of responsibility that falls on the shoulders of actors. Patinkin was so rude, Yentl left for America without ever meeting her famous man. Think about that. Imagine if Christopher Plummer was as rude as Julie Andrews and the von Trapps never moved to Switzerland.