Dick Van Dyke revealed how he’s been able to live a long life.
The “Mary Poppins” star, who’s set to turn 100 years old on Dec. 13, recently recalled giving up alcohol and smoking in his 50s. Van Dyke credited the choice for why he’s “still here.”
The comments came when he spoke about working with Walt Disney, who died of lung cancer in 1966, at a Vandy High Tea event held at his home in Malibu, Calif., on Nov. 30. Van Dyke recalled that Disney “smoked too much,” per People.
He later corrected his son Barry Van Dyke when Barry said the actor didn’t smoke much.
“I smoked a lot, actually!” Dick noted. “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.”
“So I got rid of booze and cigarettes and all that stuff, which is probably why I’m still here,” he added.
The “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” star has previously candidly discussed quitting drinking and smoking.
In 1972, he checked himself into a hospital after revealing he was dealing with alcoholism. But he admitted quitting smoking “was twice as hard” on the “Really No Really” podcast in 2023.
“It was much worse than the alcohol,” he shared. “I’m still chewing the nicotine gum.”
Dick — who has a 46-year age gap with his wife, 54-year-old Arlene Silver — reflected on his aging in an essay for the Sunday Times published last month.
“It’s frustrating to feel diminished in the world, physically and socially,” he wrote.
He said that his loved ones now almost always have to visit him at his home since traveling is too taxing on him these days.
“Like my old characters, I am now a stooper, a shuffler and a teeterer,” he shared. “I have feet problems and I go supine as often as is politely possible.”
“My sight is so bad now that origami is out of the question,” he also revealed. “I have trouble following group conversations and complain frequently about my hearing aids, though I would never refer to them as ear trumpets. I’m not that old.”
But he noted that on the inside, he still felt young.
“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 aging,” he said.
“That stuff is real but I have not let it define me,” he continued. “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. Being alive has been doing life — not like a job but rather like a giant playground.”
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