<P> Still, Garbo signed a contract in 1948 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais . Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct . She made several screen tests, learned the script, and arrived in Rome in the summer of 1949 to shoot the picture . However, the financing failed to materialize and the project was abandoned . The screen tests--the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera--were thought to have been lost for forty - one years until they were rediscovered in 1990 by film historians Leonard Maltin and Jeanine Basinger . Parts of the footage were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo . </P> <P> In 1949, she was offered the role of fictional silent - film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard . However, after a meeting with film producer Charles Brackett, she insisted that she had no interest in the part whatsoever . </P> <P> She was offered many roles in the 1940s and throughout her retirement years but she rejected all but a few of them . In the few instances when she accepted, the slightest problem led her to drop out . Although she refused to talk to friends throughout her life about her reasons for retiring, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman four years before her death "I was tired of Hollywood . I did not like my work . There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio...I really wanted to live another life ." </P> <P> From the early days of her career, Garbo avoided industry social functions, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends . She never signed autographs or answered fan mail, and rarely gave interviews . Nor did she ever appear at Oscar ceremonies, even when she was nominated . Her aversion to publicity and the press was undeniably genuine, and exasperating to the studio at first . In an interview in 1928, she explained that her desire for privacy began when she was a child, stating "as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone . I detest crowds, don't like many people ." </P>

Who said i want to be left alone