Dick Van Dyke has revealed the secret to living a long life.
The Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang actor is set to celebrate his 100th birthday this weekend on December 13, but he insisted he wouldn’t have reached his centenary if it wasn’t for a lifestyle overhaul in his 50s.
Decades ago, Dick gave up cigarettes and alcohol after realising he needed to make some changes.
Speaking at the Vandy High Tea fundraising event at his home in Malibu, Dick revealed he was ‘probably the last person alive’ who got to know and spend time with Walt Disney before he died of lung cancer in 1966.
According to People, he said at the fundraiser for The Van Dyke Endowment of the Arts and the Dick Van Dyke Museum: ‘He was a wonderful guy. He just smoked too much! Doggone.’
Dick’s son, Barry Van Dyke, 74, noted his dad had ‘never smoked too much’ himself, but the big screen legend admitted that wasn’t the case.
‘I smoked a lot, actually,’ he confessed. ‘I think I was probably in my 50s before it dawned on me that I had an addictive personality. If I liked something, I was going to overdo it.’
He added: ‘So I got rid of booze and cigarettes and all that stuff, which is probably why I’m still here.’
Dick checked into rehab in 1973 to help overcome his alcoholism, and while getting sober he also quit smoking but previously admitted he found quitting nicotine to be ‘twice as hard’.
Back in 2023, he told the Really No Really podcast that it took ‘forever’ to give up smoking, adding: ‘It was much worse than the alcohol.’
Dick – who married Arlene Silver, 54, in 2012 – recently admitted he feels ‘lonely’ and ‘frustrated’ in his old age because he’s outlived most of his best friends and he rarely gets to attend glitzy showbiz events because of his declining health.
‘Every single one of my dearest lifelong friends is gone, which feels just as lonely as it sounds. It’s frustrating to feel diminished in the world, physically and socially,’ he told The Times.
He misses being on set, and admitted while he gets invited to events or ‘gigs’ in cities like New York and Chicago, the travel ‘takes so much out of’ him that he has to turn them down.
However, the actor is determined not to become a grumpy old man.
He added: ‘We all have the capacity for a joyful life. 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.’
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