Dick Van Dyke: celebrating a centenarian
It has been a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious life for the man who loved Mary Poppins.
We loved him in movies such as Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and bumbling around in his own TV show, playing characters who seemed to be in perpetual motion.
For decades, he sang, danced, and played the clown on the big screen.
It’s hard to believe that Dick Van Dyke turned 100 last week.
While he has naturally slowed down, in various interviews he has divulged some less known aspects of his life.
Did you know that, during filming of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he was seriously considered for the part of James Bond? It’s something Van Dyke only recently revealed, saying he regretted not taking it further.
But he did say in a TV interview that he wanted to play one more role – that of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.
Elsewhere he’s reported to have said, just before his big birthday, “I’ve made it to 99 in no small part because I have stubbornly refused to give into the bad stuff in life: failures and defeats, personal losses, loneliness and bitterness, the physical and emotional pains of ageing.
“That stuff is real, but I have not let it define me. Instead, for the vast majority of my years, I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living.
“Being alive has been doing life – not like a job but rather like a giant playground.”
Van Dyke says he probably would never have reached 100 if he’d continued living the addictive lifestyle he once had. At 50, he shelved alcohol and cigarettes – which, he said, is “probably why I’m still here”.
In 1972, he admitted himself to hospital to treat alcoholism.
He says quitting drinking was brutal, but cigarettes were “twice as hard” to give up.
Van Dyke credits his long life not only to quitting his vices, but to refusing to embrace resentment.
“I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides – and hate,” he said. “And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.”
He said his father, who was “constantly upset by the state of things”, died at just 73.
And death? He says he's not afraid of it.
“When you expire, you expire. I don't have any fear of death for some reason… I've had such a wonderfully full and exciting life. That I can't complain,' he told People last month. 'I feel really good for 100… I never wake up in a bad mood.”
In the lead up to his milestone birthday, Van Dyke wrote a book about growing older, titled 100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist's Guide to a Happy Life.
It is an autobiographical collection of life advice, anecdotes, and reflections on how he’s maintained good health and a zest for living.
His secret to getting to 100? “Never stop singing.”
Related reading: News, Daily Mail
Related viewing: NBC Today
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Image by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, US, of Dick van Dyke at 2024 Phoenix Fan Fusion at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona via CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.
