You’d think that when you’re 93, have been in the showbiz industry for 76 years and your sitcom gets cancelled, it might be a good time to call it a day. Not if you’re Betty White. She’s the perennial Golden Girl, somehow ageless despite her well-advanced years. This is, after all, a woman who still takes a group of girlfriends to Santa Monica every week and “drinks everyone else under the table”.
“She lives off hot dogs and vodka,” says her Hot in Cleveland co-star Wendie Malick. “It’s her secret weapon. I don’t think it’s for everyone – don’t try it home!”
And typically, instead of putting her feet up with some cross-stitch and a cuppa when Hot in Cleveland wraps this year, Betty’s diving head-on into a new project, one that combines her two greatest passions – animals and television. The much-loved star will host a new TV show, Betty White’s Smartest Animals in America, a dream come true for the critter-mad actress, who has had an involvement with the Los Angeles Zoo for 50 years.
Betty’s new project combines her two passions – animals and television.
Betty also credits animals – her two dogs Timmy and Sooner – for helping her get over the death of her husband and soulmate, game show host Allen Ludden, in 1981. Even when she visited President Obama at the White House in 2012, she admitted that the real highlight of the visit was meeting the First Dog, Bo.
“I’m the luckiest old broad on two feet, because my life is divided into exact halves,” she says. “Half is my animal work, half my show business work. I have to stay in business to pay for my animal work!
“Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticise. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.”
‘I’m the same Betty I’ve always been, take it or leave it. I may be a senior, but so what. I’m still hot!’
Though she is hurtling towards 100, there are no signs Betty will be slowing down. “I don’t go around thinking, ‘Oh, I’m 93, I better do this or I better do that,’” she says. “I’m the same Betty I’ve always been, take it or leave it.
“I may be a senior, but so what. I’m still hot!” Blessed with good health, save for an occasional sore back, Betty still lives in the same Brentwood home she shared with Allen and drives herself to and from work.
According to her Hot in Cleveland co-star Wendie, Betty “lives off hot dogs and vodka”
She wakes at 6am and won’t go to bed until midnight, but still has “an amazing amount of energy” for someone of any age, let alone a 93-year-old, a friend said last year. Since arriving in Hollywood as a fresh-faced “unphotogenic” 17-year-old in 1939, Betty has made her mark in the industry, paving the way for women to have creative control in front of the camera and behind it.
She appeared in plenty of variety shows and co-founded a production company, but her real big break came in The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1973, playing TV hostess Sue Ann Nivens. “I loved Sue Ann. She was so rotten,” Betty remembers. “You can’t get much more rotten than the neighbourhood nymphomaniac.”
In 1985 The Golden Girls premiered and from then until today, her career has enjoyed an incredible run of success. She has appeared in blockbusters with Sandra Bullock and Kristen Bell and hosts the reality show Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, in which senior citizens pull pranks on younger generations.
“I never expected to be working at this age, but I love doing what I do,” she says. “Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren’t going to get rid of me that way!”
“When you have the best, who needs the rest?” said Betty of husband Allen.
She’s been single since her beloved Allen passed away. “When you have had the best, who needs the rest?” she says. Well, “that and the fact Robert Redford never calls!” But her days are never lonely they’re filled with charity work, filming commitments and writing. She’s currently penning her third book.
A personal trainer visits twice a week and Betty enjoys long walks. She also has a two-story house and a bad memory, so “I’m up and down those stairs all the time, that’s my exercise”. Betty’s secret and what’s endeared her to Hollywood, and the world – is that she has made it her business to “get along with people so I can have fun. It’s that simple.” And of course, a vodka on the rocks – her signature drink – doesn’t go amiss either.
Words by: Vivienne Archer
