In a warmly modulated but strong voice, June Squibb says, “No! I’m not kidding!’’
She explains that her contract stipulates that no film, stage or TV director may work her longer than 10 hours a day.
Ten hours? The woman is 94 years old. Let’s face it: How many 90-plus people can slug it out for 10 hours under the insistent lights and cramped conditions of a soundstage, and also remember their lines? And be charming and deeply likable.
And be the toast of the town.
Squibb, born in 1929, is the star of two box office bonanzas this season: the charming “Thelma,’’ about an elderly woman who fights back when she’s scammed out of money, and the animated hit “Inside Out 2,’’ in which she voices the character Nostalgia.
“There are directors who get a little frustrated that I can’t work longer, but in the film industry this is what happens. Normally, on filmmaking you might work 12, 14, 15 hours a day. The days are really impossibly long,’’ Squibb says by telephone from Los Angeles, where she lives.
“But I have always had energy. I danced for years on Broadway in many shows, and I have just always had the ability to call forth what was needed; I still have, even now,” Squibb says. “I can tell when I get tired now, so sometimes I have to give into it, which I didn’t do before. It means stopping, you take a rest, but it doesn’t mean I can’t do stuff! Just maybe I have to slow it down.’’
She thinks that yes, some of her energy may be a genetic gift.
A 75-Year Career
Born in the lake town of Vandalia, Ill., population about 7,500 currently, to JoyBelle Squibb, a pianist who played accompaniment to silent films at the local theater, and Lewis Squibb, an insurance agent, Squibb has a credits list that reaches from here to around the block and back.
“It’s also in my training for the theater; in the theater, you are always going; in film you can stop more easily, but in theater, you just keep going.’’
Squibb started dancing and singing professionally in the late 1940s at the St. Louis Opera Theatre and the Cleveland Play House. She then landed in New York during the theater’s post-war golden age, performing in musicals such as “Gypsy,’’ during which star Ethel Merman told Squibb dirty jokes, off stage of course.
Squibb toured in a series of Broadway shows and did regional theater. In 1985, when she was 56, she began a long and fruitful career performing on TV, in series such as “Law & Order,’’ “Glee,’’ “Judging Amy,’’ “ER,’’ “Curb Your Enthusiasm,’’ “Grey’s Anatomy,’’ several soaps and this season’s “Velma.’’
At 61, she launched a third performing career — in feature movies, beginning with “Alice’’ (1990). Her credits include playing Jack Nicholson’s wife in “About Schmidt’’(2002). Its director/screenwriter, Alexander Payne, cast Squibb again in his film “Nebraska,’’ (2013) and, at 83, she was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for that performance. She won several film critics’ groups awards for the role.
In 2024 alone, Squibb has starred or appeared in five feature films, including “Thelma,’’ and the upcoming “Eleanor the Great’’ and “Lost & Found in Cleveland.’’
She Met the Real Thelma, 104
Squibb is matter of fact about her impressive accomplishments; she just likes what she does.
“Being a role model, I don’t know. It’s funny, I just always kept on working all the time, like, this is what I do, and you know, the roles are wonderful.”
“Being a role model, I don’t know. It’s funny, I just always kept on working all the time, like, this is what I do, and you know, the roles are wonderful. I’m thrilled that I am doing them. It’s in the script I always feel; if I read a script and it’s great, I do it!’’
Squibb avoided the usual circuitous, agent-controlled route of being offered the “Thelma’’ script: a friend is a friend of the film’s writer/director Josh Margolin, who based the titular character on Thelma Post, his 104-year-old grandmother.
“A very good friend of mine was at the Margolins’ house, and they were talking about this new film, being eager to get it done. My friend said ‘Who do you see doing it — how about June Squibb?’ Josh said, ‘I love June Squibb but I don’t know how to get the script to her.’
“So my friend said she’d get the script to me, and she texted me that she was sending it to me, and I read it and loved it and said yes immediately!’’
Squibb met Margolin’s grandmother, who turned 104 the day before Squibb did this interview.
“Once you meet her, you are not surprised at all that she would go out and get her money back! She has that grit and determination.’’
Still Doing Her Own Stunts
Grit and determination are a pretty fair description of Squibb’s assets, only in a relaxed Midwesterner sort of way.
Her first marriage to Edward Sostek ended in divorce in 1959. She then married acting teacher Charles Kakatsakis, now deceased, and they had a son, Harry, a filmmaker who lives in San Diego with his partner, a lawyer.
Squibb says she did many of the stunts called for in “Thelma,’’ including buzzing around on a motor scooter through the back streets and alleys of the city where she lives.
Going in, she knew from reading the script that Thelma rides the motor scooter, and handles a pistol and does bed rolls. The filmmakers weren’t sure they wanted her to do the stunts — she did have a stunt double — but she convinced them she could do a certain amount of physical work.
Margolin has said that once the producers realized how fast and tippy the motor scooter was, they were nervous about Squibb’s welfare. They considered getting a replacement for her in those scenes, but Squibb prevailed, and was never happier than when she floored the scooter.
A longtime dancer on the stage, Squibb had to work herself back into shape 40 years ago.
“I had danced most of my early career, then when I hit my 40s, 50s I didn’t dance as much,” she says.”Also I broke my ankle, and so I thought in terms of, well, I’ll just live, I don’t have to work, so I didn’t do anything about my body.”
The Best Advice Her FA Gave Her
“Then I realized that my mother and father were both living into their 90s and in their generation that was old. The money advisor my husband and I had handling our money asked me how old were my parents, and when I told him, he said ‘June, you have got to think of living a long life, because it’s in the genes.’
“So I went and got a trainer in New York and starting working out. I figured if I am going to live so long, I want to be able to move. I worked with a trainer a long, long time.
“When I first came out here (to Los Angeles) I swam all the time and now I am doing Pilates. I go to Pilates classes and they say at my age, there is no other one than me doing this! I just feel, If I am going to live so long, I have to move,’’ Squibb says.
The Power of Friendship
Aside from keeping active professionally, Squib enjoys reading, watching “cop shows on TV,’’ and she has a busy social life. In mid-July, she returned from a 10-day vacation in Hawaii with a couple that have a time share on the Big Island.
And she enjoys eating out with friends, many of whom are much younger.
“I don’t know exactly how it happened, through my work basically. I did ’Glee,’ and I became bonded at the hip with one of the writers. Now he’s one of my closest friends, and he and his partner, we have dinner together every three or four weeks, and they’re with us at the holidays — I usually have a big dinner at Christmas. They are very important to me.”
“I always think of my friends now as my family, because I don’t have that much family left that I see. And Fred Hechinger (who played Squibb’s grandson in ‘Thelma’), we became close friends. When he’s in LA, he stops by, and we have dinner. When I’m in New York, we have dinner,’’ she says.
Having performed for more than 70 years in productions that included Merman, Al Pacino, Jerry Orbach, Mia Farrow, Debbie Reynolds, Bob Newhart, Glenn Close, Steven Hill, Blythe Danner and her “Thelma’’ co-star, Richard Roundtree, who died shortly after filming, Squibb would seem to have plenty to tell.
“My assistant is determined to get a documentary made about me or a memoir written. A writer friend said I should do it, and I said ‘Okay, I will,’ but I really don’t have a yen to do it. I will tell a story (about a show or movie) and the reaction will be ‘Oh my God,’ and I know what they’re thinking: ‘What a life, how did she get away!’ But I really don’t think that much about it,’’ Squibb says.
Age Is Just a Number
The Thelma character needs a tutelage in using a desktop computer from her grandson (Hechinger, 24). But Squibb herself is reasonably comfortable with modern technology.
“I have an iPhone, and I used to have an iPad. My assistant works on an iPad so I work with her on that some, but I have never done a full (desktop) computer, until we were shooting. I didn’t know what a mouse was — they were all laughing at me over that. So I was very convincing in those scenes!’’
Squibb says being interviewed about Thelma has brought to mind the issue of what it means to be an older person in American society. She’s still not a good fit for the usual assumptions about the elderly’s limitations.
“Everybody is becoming more fascinated about age, and there’s much more talk about it, because so many people are older now, we are living so much longer.
“Honestly, the concept of 94, I don’t think so much about it. Certainly, I have thought about how long am I going to be doing what I’m doing now. At this age, you do think about how much longer and, do I want to keep working, but I never have an answer!
‘’I still always look forward to a new acting job. I always feel I will learn something, Squibb says. “I still think I am learning — about acting, and maybe I will learn about myself.’’
In a four-decade career in journalism, Eleanor O’Sullivan has reviewed many books on best practices for financial advisors, has written for Financial Advisor and the USA Today network, and was movie critic for the Asbury Park Press.
