Dick Van Dyke, the squeaky-clean Disney icon, gave up his vices long ago — and says it’s paid off with a remarkably long life.
The “Mary Poppins” star, who turns 100 on Dec. 13, says his sweeping lifestyle changes may be why he’s still going strong.
“So I got rid of booze and cigarettes and all that stuff, which is probably why I’m still here,” Van Dyke said at a recent Vandy High Tea event at his Malibu, California, home, People reported.
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“I smoked a lot, actually!” the 99-year-old actor admitted. “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.”
During the event, Van Dyke recalled meeting Walt Disney in the early 1960s. The pioneering animator died in 1966 at age 65 from lung cancer.
“He was a wonderful guy,” said Van Dyke. “He just smoked too much!”
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In 1972, Van Dyke checked into a hospital to address his alcoholism, People reported.
Van Dyke previously told the “Really No Really” podcast that sharing his struggles with alcohol was important to him because he hoped it would help others.
“I knew so many people who couldn’t get out of it,” he said. “I was in my 30s, and I didn’t drink. I moved to a neighborhood … where they had parties every Saturday, and I started to drink with them. Before I knew it, I was hung up on this stuff. I couldn’t believe it. Same with smoking.”
Van Dyke noted he only drank “socially,” never while working or before going to the set. Still, it affected his life when the cameras stopped rolling.
“An alcoholic will go from a happy drunk, eventually into a mean drunk and an unhappy guy,” he said. “And I was getting testy, and I just hated it.”
Still, the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” actor admitted that quitting smoking was “twice as hard.”
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“Much worse than the alcohol,” he shared on the podcast. “[It took] forever.”
In an essay he wrote for The Times U.K. ahead of his birthday, Van Dyke shared that staying active has been key to keeping himself physically strong and mentally sharp. It also lets him pursue his love of dancing.
“I still try to hit the gym three times a week,” he explained. “I don’t know why this is something I still want to do, but it is. I’m not a ‘wake up and go back to bed’ type just yet, unless it’s cold and rainy. If I miss too many gym days, I really can feel it — a stiffness creeping in here and there. If I let that set in, well, God help me.”
“At the gym, I usually do a circuit, going from one machine to the next without a break, in a circle,” he said. “I start with the sit-up machine. [My wife] Arlene says I could do 500, but that might be exaggerating. Then I do all the leg machines religiously because my legs are two of my most cherished possessions. And then the upper body.”
“The secret ingredient is the music,” he continued. “Most of my humming and singing really happens when I’m going from one machine to another. By ‘going’ I mean dancing. You heard me — dancing! And if I’m really feeling it, I’m no quiet warbler; I’m a Broadway belter.”
While exercise keeps his body moving, it’s love that keeps his heart young.
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“I met Arlene in 2006, and she quickly became my soulmate and the love of my life,” he wrote about his wife, 54.
“Without question, our ongoing romance is the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch. Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters my age — which is still saying a lot. Every day she finds a new way to keep me up and moving, bright and hopeful and needed.”
“Boiled down, the things that have kept my life joyful and fulfilling are pretty simple: romance, doing what I love and a whole lot of laughing,” he continued.
“Let me show you what that looks like on the ground, as they say. To pull the ‘grumpy old man’ away from the TV, Arlene will dance along to the pharmaceutical ads. This gets me out of bed, following her to the kitchen.”
“Invariably, one of us will start singing, and the other will join in. And if it’s a good day, which it almost always is in our house, we’ll break into a little swaying and soft-shoe right there.”
Looking ahead, the beloved entertainer’s biggest piece of advice for embracing aging is surprisingly simple: don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself. A sense of humor, he says, can outshine the hardest parts of growing older.
“As I get older, I have found that life is more and more a comedy of errors,” he said. “So if you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ve got big problems.”
