Barbra Streisand to Revive 25-Year-Old Script in Directorial Return

After a 16-year absence, Streisand wants to get back behind the camera—if she can raise the cash for her independent film

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Steve Marcus / Reuters

Singer and actress Barbra Streisand performs.

If you want to see Barbra Streisand, 70, return to directing, you may need to start up a phone-a-thon to raise enough money to get her project started.

The legendary singer—who directed The Mirror Has Two Faces 16 years ago, starring herself and Jeff Bridges—announced she plans to direct Skinny and Cat, a love story of a female photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, a “woman ahead of her time,” and an author, Erskine Caldwell, according to the Los Angeles Times.

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Streisand has raised money for everything from a women’s heart center in Los Angeles that now bears her name to a theater in her original hometown of Brooklyn (not including the countless political efforts she supports), but she says that collecting cash for her new independently funded film has proven quite tricky. “I’m just in shock,” she tells the Times. “Hollywood has changed so much. It’s about a woman ahead of her time. It’s just a fascinating story that is very relevant to today. I may have to pick up the phone again.”

If she does get on the phone and pull in the $20 million she needs to start production in January 2013 as planned, Streisand will unveil a script she wrote 25 years ago, with stars Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett already signed on to lead the romance. Streisand has revived the script after originally shelving it when Farrah Fawcett took Bourke-Whiteand’s story to the small screen before Streisand could star opposite Robert Redford in her own version.

Since The Mirror Has Two Faces, Streisand has appeared in just two movies, Meet the Fockers in 2004 and Little Fockers in 2010. She will also show up in this year’s upcoming movie The Guilt Trip. But we may soon be seeing a Streisand-inspired Blanchett soon, if someone gets on the horn and raises some money, that is.

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