Photo: Magnolia Pictures/AP.
Actor June Squibb with Richard Roundtree in the movie Thelma.
I’ve been wanting to see this movie since I first read about it, but I have trouble accessing movies these days. Some get shown on the tv network in our retirement community, but we may not get this one for a while as it’s not available yet.
What’s cool about Thelma is that the lead actor is 94 and also that she has glowing reviews.
Fiona Sturges writes at the Guardian, “There’s a new action hero in town. In Josh Margolin’s wildly entertaining Thelma, an elderly widow is duped out of $10,000 by a scammer masquerading as her grandson. Realizing her error, she resolves to track him down, retrieve her cash and dispense some rough justice.
If summer blockbusters are about the action, then Thelma has it all: guns, explosions and mobility scooter-based stunts.
“When the 94-year-old actor June Squibb read the script, with its mischievous nods to Mission: Impossible, she knew she had to do it. She also knew she would do lots of the stunts herself. ‘I have more security in my physicality than a lot of people do, and I thought riding around on that scooter was going to be great fun,’ she beams. …
“She says she is in excellent health, even though, ‘I should be doing pilates more than I am, because I’ve had such a crazy schedule. I was doing it for one hour a week with a trainer, and it makes a huge difference. I’m in good shape.’
“Extraordinarily, Thelma is Squibb’s first ever starring role. Until now, she has been viewed as a character actor, someone you’re more likely to know by face (or by voice: she is Nostalgia in Inside Out 2) than by name. She has spent decades quietly propping up lead actors playing their wives, mothers and grandmothers in films such as Scent of a Woman, About Schmidt and Palm Springs. …
“While Thelma is primarily a comedy, it is underpinned by a more serious theme: the way society treats its elderly. We see Thelma’s well-meaning family talking about her when she’s still in the room and pondering whether to move her into a home. … But she is happy to report that, in her 10th decade, she has had nothing but love and respect from her family and has retained her independence. She lives in an apartment complex in the San Fernando Valley. … ‘And I have a wonderful assistant without whom I couldn’t keep working,’ Squibb says. ‘I have two cats and I make sure that, first thing in the morning, they’re taken care of. And then I have most of the day to myself if I’m not filming. I have no trouble getting around, though I do get tired. Tiredness is real when you get to my age.’
“Yet Squibb has rarely been in such demand. She credits her increased workload to a ‘greater interest in the aging process. There’s more work for people my age than ever before. … When I was a young, good-looking actor in New York, I was constantly aware that people looked at me as an object.’ She and her contemporaries had their coping mechanisms, ‘but I got mad too. When #MeToo happened, all of us in our 80s were amazed. We were, like, “Oh my God, we’ve lived this our whole lives.” ‘ …
“Squibb learned her craft in the 1950s at the Cleveland Play House, where she met Jack Lee, who went on to become a leading musical director on Broadway. ‘He decided I had to sing. So, I began singing and I did all the comedienne roles in all the musicals. … My first 20 years in New York were all musicals.’ Then came a gear-change after she met her second husband, Charles Kataksakis, an acting coach. Kataksakis thought she had it in her to play more serious roles (he and Squibb were together for 40 years until his death in 1999). …
“Squibb was 61 when she made the move from stage to screen. … ‘I went to my agent and said, “I think I should be doing this too.” The next week I was auditioning for Woody Allen.’ That film was Alice, a romcom starring Mia Farrow in which Squibb played a maid. The casting director, Ellen Lewis, took an instant shine to Squibb and set her up for a meeting with Martin Brest, who cast her in his new Al Pacino vehicle, Scent of a Woman. …
“After that came roles in TV shows . … [Alexander] Payne brought her on board for 2013’s Nebraska, in which she played the abrasive and unfiltered Kate, wife of Bruce Dern’s delusional Woody. The role earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. …
“Squibb just wrapped another film, playing the lead in Eleanor the Great, about a 90-year-old who moves back to New York after decades in Florida. It is the directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson, who Squibb describes as ‘so bright, so smart.’ Being No 1 on the call sheet, she says, means ‘going into it with a feeling of responsibility that you don’t have with a supporting role. I always felt what I did was important. But as the lead you’re kind of responsible for the whole film.’ ”
More at the Guardian, here. Have you seen this movie yet? (Looking at Laurie, who seems to see everything.)
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