On a sunny June afternoon in the San Fernando Valley, the summer’s most unexpected action hero, June Squibb, sits at a small dining table in her ground-floor apartment, which she shares with two cats. Offering her guest a plate of cookies, Squibb recounts how her son Harry insisted she move to this unit three years ago to avoid daily stair navigation. “He was right — moving down here was the best thing I could have done,” she says. This may not seem like the typical setting for an interview with an action star, but then again, Squibb is 94 years old, and her career has been anything but typical.
After decades on the New York stage, Squibb transitioned to film and TV in her 60s, working with directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Alexander Payne. At 84, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Payne’s 2013 film “Nebraska.” Now, at an age when many actors have long since retired, she is stepping into the spotlight with her first starring role.
In the comedy “Thelma,” which hits theaters this Friday, Squibb plays a determined grandmother who is scammed out of $10,000 by a phone fraudster. She embarks on a quest to reclaim her money, taking to the streets on a scooter hijacked from an elderly friend, played by the late Richard Roundtree. Written and directed by Josh Margolin, the film has garnered praise for its fresh take on action tropes and its sensitive portrayal of later life. Magnolia Pictures is releasing “Thelma” on more than a thousand screens, marking the widest opening in the indie distributor’s history.
For Squibb, who hails from Illinois, this is a new experience. “They keep saying that: ‘You were No. 1!’ It’s so funny to hear that because, my God, all these years I just have never dealt with anything like that,” she says.
When she first read Margolin’s script, Squibb immediately connected with Thelma’s determination to confront those who wronged her. Her late husband, acting teacher Charles Kakatsakis, always told her she could have made a good cop. “I think he’s right,” says Squibb, who loves police procedural shows and has several bookshelves filled with Scandinavian crime novels. “I have a great sense of justice, of what’s right and wrong. Since I was a kid, that’s always been a part of my ethos.”
Finding an actor in their mid-90s to play a role like Thelma is no easy task, but for Margolin, there was only one choice. “June is such a perfect mixture of strong but vulnerable, funny but understated,” says Margolin. “She has that spirit where she just doesn’t quit, and that’s such an essential piece of that character and of my real grandma. I was just dead-set on it being her.”
“Thelma” playfully incorporates “Mission: Impossible”-style action scenes, scaled to a nonagenarian’s abilities. Like Tom Cruise, Squibb performed many of her own stunts, including driving a scooter at inadvisable speeds and rolling across a bed with a gun in her hand. “I loved the scooters,” Squibb says with a smile. “I have to admit, I did not do the wheelie. But I really did most of my stunts.”
In some ways, the physicality of the role was nothing new to Squibb, who honed her talents as a dancer and singer from an early age. Born and raised in Vandalia, Illinois, Squibb could not have been much further removed from Hollywood growing up. “I had an aunt who tap-danced and whistled through her teeth — that’s the closest I came,” she says. “But I just knew what I was: I was an actress. It never occurred to me that there would be any other way.”
While still in her teens, Squibb began performing in theaters in St. Louis and Cleveland before moving to New York, where she made her Broadway debut in “Gypsy” alongside Ethel Merman in 1959. “My first 20 years were all in musical theater,” she said. “I did everything: Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, regional. I just wanted to work.”
Squibb was in her early 60s when she made her film debut in Allen’s 1990 romantic comedy “Alice.” From that point on, she continued to find steady work in Hollywood, from films like Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” and Payne’s “About Schmidt” to countless TV appearances. In 2013, she delivered a scene-stealing turn in Payne’s “Nebraska,” earning Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations along with an Oscar nod for supporting actress.
A decade later, she still vividly remembers sitting in her apartment with her son, Harry Kakatsakis, watching the Oscar nominations being announced. “They said my name and he said, ‘Mom, you did it — you did it,’ ” she says. “And we’re both just sitting there crying. You can look back on it and think, ‘Well, what is it?’ But even now, I’m very proud that next to my name it says ‘Oscar nominee.'”
In the years since then, Squibb has found herself getting recognized in public more often. “We go to Gelson’s and there’s almost always somebody in there that stops by and says something to me,” says Squibb, who has an assistant but otherwise still lives independently. “Sometimes they think I’m a teacher they had many years ago or something like that. It’s fun.”
Squibb initially thought “Thelma” might be her swan song, but the offers keep coming in. She recently played a vampiric leprechaun in the latest season of “American Horror Story” and will next star in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great.” Despite Hollywood’s obsession with youth, Squibb is encouraged by the variety of roles she’s being offered, which go well beyond the stereotypical grandmotherly type.
“Eleanor is very different from Thelma, and God knows they’re both different from the leprechaun,” she says. “I think things are changing. We have these wonderful women doing leading roles at 40, 50, even 60. That never would have happened even 20 years ago when I first came out here.”
Squibb attributes her ability to keep working to good genes and an active lifestyle. “Both my parents died at 91, which in their generation was very old,” she says. “And, you know, I danced for years in New York. I started swimming for an hour a day when I moved out here, and I still do Pilates once a week. So I think that has a lot to do with it. Physically, I just never stopped.”
And at this point, as long as she remains healthy and able, she has no intention of stopping. “I am completely going against the rules,” she says. “It never occurs to me that I’m doing something different than most people. There are no rules. Now I’m just like, ‘Well, I wonder what I’ll do next?'”
So what about “Thelma 2”? After all, every action star needs a franchise. “Everyone is kidding about that, saying, ‘If June does it, I’ll do it,'” Squibb says. She laughs. “I’m like, ‘Oh, s—.'”
