JUNE SQUIBB, 94, is driving me around the parking lot of her Sherman Oaks apartment complex on a red three-wheeled, two-person mobility scooter, her white hair fluttering in the late-May breeze. The complex, where the actor has lived for 20 years, is a kitschy, 1950s-style Hawaii-meets-Old Hollywood fever dream, crumbling a bit around the edges but mostly uncannily preserved, as if at any moment Bing Crosby might emerge from behind a palm tree and offer you a midday stinger.
Squibb, in a green L.L.Bean cargo jacket over a colorful striped top, is cheerful and calm as she pilots the gigantic craft at ten mph, pointing out the surrounding attractions: the rock-pile "volcano" that spurts bright-blue water ("The Blue Lagoon!"); one of the five pools where she swims to keep fit whenever she can; the recording studio, where she once did a podcast "just talking about me, basically."
A cartoonishly handsome stunt coordinator named Ryan Sturz runs next to us at a healthy clip, making sure Squibb doesn’t fall off. Squibb met Sturz on the set of Thelma, a warm and moving comedy about a Jewish grandma who gets phone-scammed out of $10,000 and, much to the anxiety of her close-knit family (played by Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Fred Hechinger, all operating at their peak), sneaks off on a renegade quest across Los Angeles to retrieve her money and her dignity. It was a huge hit at Sundance earlier this year, inciting a bidding war ultimately won by Magnolia, and is in theaters now. It’s the first time Squibb—who has worked consistently in theater, TV, and film since the early 1950s and earned her only Oscar nomination, for a supporting part in 2013’s Nebraska, at the age of 84—has ever been cast in a lead role.
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