Why Barbra Streisand threatened to replace Mandy Patinkin in ‘Yentl.’ His problematic behavior on the set, revealed

Consider Mandy Patinkin: Star of stage and screen, onetime Inigo Montoya, and celebrated performer of “I’m Singing in the Bathtub.” 

He’s 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 musical children’s book for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, providing funding for paralysis and spinal injury repair research, and he stood up for writers during the 2023 WGA strike. He was pretty great on Dead Like Me and darn it all, according to Barbra Streisand, he also really wanted to kiss Yentl. 

This revelation of Patinkin’s alleged behavior on the set of Yentl, shared in Streisand’s piping hot new memoir My Name is Barbra, is more than a little troubling. Per Streisand’s recollection, Patinkin, who played Avigdor in the 1983 Academy Award-winning musical, began having trouble connecting with her character during a scene, staring at Streisand’s forehead rather than making eye contact. Confronted about his performance privately, Patinkin reportedly complained that he was disappointed that he and Streisand weren’t having an affair — something he was super sure was going to happen.

Streisand, who directed and starred in Yentl, goes on to describe shutting Patinkin down, telling him that she would have no problem replacing him and reshooting his scenes with a different actor. She further remembered changing the script moving forward to avoid performing in an intimate scene with Patinkin, who she said made her life “miserable for months.” 

Wild. These are the problems that us normals will never have to deal with. No matter how big of a pain you are at work, it’ll never get bad enough that you’ll change the trajectory of a fictional character’s love life. That’s the sort of responsibility that rests on actors’ shoulders. Patinkin was so rude, Yentl left for America without ever getting together with her leading man. Think about that. Imagine if Christopher Plummer was so rude to Julie Andrews that the von Trapps never moved to Switzerland.