Today we are turning our attention to the increasingly ubiquitous presence of performers in their golden years reaching lofty new career heights and ingratiating themselves with new audiences all the while - most notably, Elaine Stritch, Christopher Plummer, Bruce Dern, June Squibb, Judi Dench, Angela Lansbury, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones.
80, Actors, 80 Age may be a state of mind, but taste is much harder to define and discern - particularly good taste. Yet, like fine wine, a handful of truly tremendous stage and screen stars have ascended to new levels of fame, notoriety and artistry while in their late-70s and 80s, particularly in the last several months. One need look no further than the brand new documentary ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME, opening in select cities this weekend before a wide release next month, highlighting legendary Broadway icon and recognizable, multi-award-winning small screen and big screen presence Elaine Stritch. Salty, sophisticated, smart and altogether hilarious, Stritch is one of a kind and so is her movie - at turns moving, melancholy, ebullient, effervescent, sobering and always absorbing. It's a true accomplishment and a more than merely worthy capper - or, should we say, grand continuation - of the 89-year-old's remarkably idiosyncratic and fascinating career. Nonetheless, as she herself told me in our extensive InDepth InterView earlier this week - available here - there is nothing Stritch despises more than being called a diva - but, not as a result of the implication of attendant unreasonable demands and fits of fury, but because, as she put it, "God, I could kill when I hear that word; the way it makes me feel... I don't know what it makes me feel like when they call me that, but I don't like it! Not at all. It makes me feel 100-years-old, at least!" Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, though, being 100 - far from it.
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