How does June Squibb do it at age 95? 'I just gird my loins and go'
[September 27, 2025]
By JAKE COYLE
TORONTO (AP) — 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.
“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.”
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Actor June Squibb poses for a portrait to promote her film "Eleanor
the Great" during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept.
8, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
 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.”
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