TORONTO, ONT – There are 70-year-olds who want to be like June Squibb when they grow up.
Squibb, 95, wasn’t the lead of a movie until she was 94. Now, a year after she turned action star in “Thelma,” Squibb is again the leading lady and face on the poster again, for “Eleanor the Great,” Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut. With it, Squibb is proving, again, that Hollywood stardom needn’t belong to the young.
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“I think a lot of that is because I never stopped,” Squibb says with a chuckle. “And it never occurred to me at 90 that I was supposed to say ‘No, I can’t work anymore!’”
Film festivals can be taxing on people half of Squibb’s age. But in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, Squibb was more chipper than most. She had also traveled with the film in May for the film’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival. And in a few weeks, she’ll begin rehearsals to star in “Marjorie Prime.” More than 60 years after making her Broadway debut in “Gypsy,” opposite Ethel Merman, Squibb is going back to Broadway.
“I just thought: I really want to do this,” says Squibb, who last performed on Broadway in 2018 in “Waitress.” “I want to go back.”
That such things are possible for an actor in her mid-90s goes against every convention of show business, not to mention most other professions. But since her breakthrough Oscar-nominated performance in Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” (2013), Squibb has enjoyed the richest acting run of her life despite being well past what most consider retirement age. How does she have the energy?
“I don’t know, either,” she says, laughing and shaking her head. “I just gird my loins and go! If I stopped, I probably wouldn’t start again.”
After a lifetime of auditions, Squibb hasn’t had to try out for a role since “Nebraska.” For an Illinois native who didn’t act in her first film until age 60 (Woody Allen’s “Alice”), her late-in-life surge has been a long-in-coming validation.
“It gives you a sense of: Well, they really know who I am now,” says Squibb.
In “Eleanor the Great,” which Sony Pictures Classics releases in theaters Friday, that’s especially true. She plays Eleanor, a woman who, after the death of her best friend (Rita Zohar), moves in with her daughter (Jessica Hecht) in New York. A little accidentally — but also out of grief and to impress a young friend (Erin Kellyman) — Eleanor adopts her deceased friend’s Holocaust survivor history.
The role is a showcase for Squibb’s unfiltered, tart-tongued comic talent, as well as her capacity for something more painful and dramatic. For Johansson, giving Squibb the part and seeing the reception for her in Cannes was the main reason for making the movie.
“I will never forget the audience reaction and June’s reaction to the audience reaction,” Johansson says. “Maybe my way of processing it, too, is through June. It makes it less personal because it’s hard for me to absorb it all. But something I’ll never forget is holding June in that moment.”
Squibb, who converted to Judaism in the 1950s, is especially fond of Eleanor. “She’s a pisser,” she says. It’s a role that casts her back to her own childhood, growing up during World War II. When news began to spread about the concentration camps, she says, “I remember how horrified we were."
Both of Squibb’s parents lived to 91. “All my doctors say: ‘Oh, your genes,’” says Squibb.
For Squibb, “Eleanor the Great” follows “Thelma,” a movie that put her in some unexpected company. In Josh Margolin’s action comedy, she plays a woman who, after being victimized by a phone scam, sets out for justice. It memorably includes a chase sequence on adult scooters.
One awards group named her best female action star. The male winner? Tom Cruise.
“I like to think we have a lot in common,” Squibb says, chuckling.
Squibb receives so many scripts for potential roles that she’s grown quite picky. Some of that is out of necessity. “Do I have to run across the room? Forget it!” says Squibb. “I have to say no.”
But doing anything new is appealing to her. She voices a character in the upcoming Disney animation “Zootopia 2.” When Ryan Murphy reached out about a role in an “American Horror Story” episode last year, it meant traveling from Los Angeles to New Jersey for a day. But she couldn’t say no.
“It was crazy! I was the grandmother of a coven of leprechauns who drank blood,” Squibb says. “And I just thought: Well, I have to do this.”
It’s enough to make you wonder what challenge is left for Squibb to conquer. She has one idea.
“I was doing an interview with Alexander Payne for ‘Thelma’ and he said, ‘OK, June, what do you want to do next?’ And I said a Western,” says Squibb. “And he said, ‘I’m writing a Western! I’ll put you in!’ I used to ride when I was a kid. I think if you got me on the horse, I could probably still do it. But maybe not. So it might be like a bordello keep.”
Squibb smiles. “I like that idea because it’s something I’ve never done.”