As Hollywood veteran Dick Van Dyke turns 100, he opens up about the secrets to his continued health and youthfulness – including what stops him becoming a ‘hermetic grouch’
Hollywood’s most senior star has played some iconic roles after a century on the planet, but as Mary Poppins icon Dick Van Dyke reveals, he has no intention of retiring.
The star, who turns 100 on December 13, says, “Retirement’s the one thing I have never figured out how to do. I did actually officially retire at 75, but I’ve been busy ever since!
“It’s not that I went looking for work but when something good comes along, I’m happy to be part of it. You don’t get many opportunities at my age, so I’m tickled by the idea of still being wanted.”
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The Missouri-born actor’s last film role was an emotional cameo in 2018 musical film Mary Poppins Returns, alongside Emily Blunt as the magical nanny. And he admits, it was special to return.
“I loved it. As soon as I heard about it, I thought, ‘This is going to be so good. I can’t pass it up. My grandkids are gonna flip when they see it. And they did!”
But alongside the stellar career, Van Dyke has had his demons, including a battle with the booze. After years of drinking which ‘ruined’ his life -and he has previously said he began doing to overcome shyness, in1972 he checked himself into a hospital to get sober.
Looking back on that challenging time, he says, “I remember going to rehab and it being nothing like today. In my day they used to lock you up with the psychos! Down in St Lukeís, in Phoenix – they didnít have any special rehab place.
“The place was locked up and you were in there with the loony people. It was only two weeks back then, although I did the whole AA 12-step thing afterwards. But hey, You’re nobody if you haven’t been to rehab these days (laughs). Whether you have a problem or not – go there!”
These days, the star is at peak fitness and admits he’s never felt better. Revealing his daily routine he says, “I don’t jog anymore but I go to the gym and lift weights – just enough at my age to stay limber. I also swim in my pool.
“I take a lot of vitamins, I try to eat right and I always start the day with a healthy breakfast of raisin Bran with wheat bran and blueberries – a great anti-oxidant. I’m in pretty good health considering how I’ve abused myself. I never expected to live this long, or feel this good.”
Alcohol isn’t the only bad habit Van Dyke has kicked over the years – he was also a chronic smoker but also quit that vice years ago.
“I smoked for a long time so I’m very lucky that I still have my lungs. I was a terrible smoker – smoking one cigarette after another. I think that all those years when I was dancing is probably what saved me. Either that, or genes. But I never did any drugs. My generation, we smoked and drank.”
The actor calls Malibu home these days, which he admits wasn’t half as star-studded when he first moved there as it is today. He says, ““I’ve lived in Malibu for years. There was nobody there when we first moved in and since then my neighbours have included Mel Gibson, Kelsey Grammer and Olivia Newton-John, a lady of the first order.”
Seen as something of a father figure to many, asked what kind of a father he was to his own four children growing up he says he was ‘kind of in between”.
Van Dyke, who shares Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth with his late first wife, Margie Willett – all of whom have appeared in his TV shows at various times, says, “My own childhood was during the Depression. My parents didn’t have any conveniences. Everybody was poor and my dad was gone a lot. My father brought home the bacon and my mother did the raising.
“So, as a parent myself, I was much more present than my own dad was but nothing compared to how my own kids are as parents now. Their whole lives are in their children – to the point that I used to wonder about what they’d do when the kids are gone.”
The star believes it’s a ‘mistake’. “My own father was a travelling salesman and only home on the weekends. I still fondly remember how, as kids, the whole summer was just me and my brother barefoot doing what we wanted. We went fishing, skinny-dipping, played baseball..”
“Kids’ lives are so compartmentalised today, so planned. I think a child needs time alone for his imagination and creativity to work. Kids who grow up micro-managed won’t know what to do with themselves.
“A kid needs some freedom. It’s sad the world has become so dangerous but they’ve got to go out there sooner or later. You can’t protect them from everything.”
His second son Barry, now 74, became the best-known of his brood, co-starring alongside his famous father for eight years on hit crime drama Diagnosis: Murder,as detective Steve Sloan.
Van Dyke also has numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren – actor Barry’s children, including Carey and Shane Van Dyke, have also worked as actors and writers, including the spec script that became the Harry Styles film Don’t Worry Darling (2022).
He married his current wife Arlene Silver, 54, in 2012, after meeting at the SAG Awards in 2006, when Silver was working as a makeup artist and swiftly becoming his ‘soulmate’.
In new book, 100 Rules for Living to 100, he says his wife, who is 46 years his junior, keeps him young and moving, previously confessing she’s “the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch.”
“Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters my age, which is still saying a lot,” he wrote in the book. “Every day she finds a new way to keep me up and moving, bright and hopeful and needed.”
Their love story followed the death of the actor’s long-term partner, Michelle Triola, from lung cancer in 2009, aged 76 – after three decades as a couple. Michelle was the star’s agent’s secretary – and it was their eight-year affair, though they never married, which led to the breakdown of his first marriage.
His union with Silva is still strong, but the comedian believes there’s a big problem right now when it comes to lasting relationships. “I don’t know what the problem is with all the divorces around. It seems like careers and marriages are getting shorter all the time. Things come and go so fast, I can’t even keep track.
“They say it’s one of the problems of celebrity – they lose sight of what’s important… I never was part of the Hollywood scene. Sad to say, many of my favourite old friends are gone. When I get together for dinner now, it’s mostly widows. It’s sad to see a whole generation disappearing.”
Of his many beloved performances, 1964’s Mary Poppins, co-starring Julie Andrews, remains the film most associate him with. And he cherishes the memories of playing Cockney chimney sweep Bert to this day.
He says, “It was the most fun I ever had on a film. It was also the hardest work. It was the perfect movie. Looking back, I think we all knew we were making history.’”
And people still talk about his dubious Cockney accent. Van Dyke laughs, “The guy they sent to coach me with my accent was Irish so his accent was no better than mine! I knew I wasn’t doing a good job but I was so into the dancing and singing that I didn’t pay enough attention to the talking.
He adds, “I remember reading an article in a British magazine about the ten worst movie dialects in movie history and thank God I wasn’t first! I think Sean Connery was first – he always did a Scottish accent no matter who he played.
“I was number two! There’s no excuse really, because I was working with Julie Andrews who, of course, spoke with a beautiful accent. You could tune a piano by her voice. I just adore Julie – although these days I don’t get to see her much.”
A few years later, Van Dyke starred in another future classic, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – and it almost led to him setting up home in England.
He says, “I wanted to settle down in Broadway, in the Cotswolds. I fell in love with that place. Lots of writers and actors lived there, I met some of them in the local pubs. I was filming Chitty for over a year, and they put me up in a big old home on 40 acres of land in Denham.
“I had butlers, chauffeurs – everything. I became a country gentleman and said to myself, ‘Iím not going home! I like it here.’ But at that time, all the Americans who lived in England were coming home because the tax laws changed and they were getting killed. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be an Englishman right now!”
