Midler's album sales fell off during the rest of the '70s, though her records always reached the Top 100 in the album chart. But in 1979 she starred in the film The Rose, a fictional account of the life of Janis Joplin, and the title track became a Top Ten hit. 1980 saw the release of Midler's concert film, Divine Madness, and her best-selling book, A View from a Broad. Her next film, Jinxed (1982), however, was a major flop, and subsequent records didn't fare well. Midler made a cinematic comeback with Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), but it wasn't until 1989 that she had another pop hit, when her version of "Wind Beneath My Wings" from her film Beaches became a number one hit. This rejuvenated her singing career, and 1990's Some People's Lives became a Top Ten, million-selling album, with the song "From a Distance" hitting number two. Midler's soundtrack album to her 1991 film For the Boys was also a gold-selling hit.

Midler appeared in a television production of the Broadway musical Gypsy that produced a charting soundtrack album in 1993 following the release of her million-selling hits collection Experience the Divine. The gold-selling Bette of Roses (1995) was her first regular album release in five years. Her 1996 film The First Wives Club was a major box office success. In 1998, she switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Bathhouse Betty, which went gold. With film opportunities drying up, the 54-year-old singer/actress turned to television, developing a half-hour network comedy series based on her own life. Though it didn't last long, Bette premiered on CBS on October 11, 2000; six days later, she released a second Warner Bros. album, also called Bette. During the next five years, Midler covered two seminal artists' songbooks, Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee, coming out with her first-ever Christmas record, which included a duet with Johnny Mathis, Cool Yule, in 2006.