Dick Van Dyke Celebrates Turning 99 in Touching New Coldplay Video

The ultimate super ager reflects on life, love and, yes, death

Abigail Seaberg,

AARP

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Published December 12, 2024

Dick Van Dyke is embracing aging in a new video with Coldplay.

Courtesy Atlantic Records

National treasure Dick Van Dyke turned 99, and to celebrate the ultimate super ager is embracing his inner rock star.

Ahead of his birthday on December 13th, Van Dyke makes a showstopping appearance in the director’s cut of the music video for Coldplay’s 2024 single, “All My Love.”

The video, directed by Spike Jonze and Mary Wigmore, puts Van Dyke front and center as he reflects on life, love and aging from the comfort of his Malibu home. (Van Dyke and wife Arlene Silver evacuated their home Tuesday due to the Malibu wildfires.)

“What is love? Boy, they’ve been attacking that question for centuries. I don’t know,” Van Dyke says in the video, filmed in October. “It certainly is a feeling of caring about the welfare and the life of the other person as much as you care for yourself.”

The video is a celebration of Van Dyke, who’s delighted audiences for decades with starring roles in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Dick Van Dyke Show. There are flashbacks to his iconic roles, B-roll filled with old photos from a life well lived, and loving shots of his family gathered at his California home. Van Dyke also doesn’t shy away from the elephant in the room.

“I’m acutely aware that I’m, you know, could go any day now, but I don’t know why it doesn’t concern me,” he explains. “I’m not afraid of it. I have that feeling, totally against anything intellectual, that I’m going to be all right.”

Van Dyke hits a high note with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

Courtesy Atlantic Records

In another interview portion of the music video, Van Dyke shares how lucky he feels to have been able to “play and act silly” for a living. And if you had any doubts about whether the charming 98-year-old could still get his groove on, consider yourself humbled. There are multiple shots of Van Dyke doing some of his signature dance moves with bare feet and a smile that are sure to brighten anyone’s day. A shorter version of the seven-minute director’s cut will be released Friday.

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“He had me doing things I didn’t know I could do,” Van Dyke joked during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

This project isn’t the first time Van Dyke has confronted the realities of getting older with grace and humor. In 2016, he spoke with AARP about the importance of being “open-minded” about aging.

“They used to sing, ‘Hope I die before I get old,’ ” Van Dyke, then 90, told us. “Those guys didn’t know what they were missing. This is the best time of life!”

Looking for more secrets to success from the king of aging himself? In his 2015 book. Keep Moving: and Other Tips and Truths About Aging, “the-glass-is-half-full optimist” shares exactly why “getting old doesn’t have to be a dreary weather report.”

Van Dyke and his wife, Arlene Silver, seen in the Coldplay video, have been married since 2012.

Courtesy Atlantic Records

“With Baby Boomers swelling the ranks of AARP and asking without embarrassment for their senior citizen discounts at the movie theater, and with people turning sixty-five expected to live on average well into their eighties, more of us (no, make that more of you–I’m already there) than at any time in human history are going to start the day staring at our reflection in the bathroom mirror and asking the same question I have asked myself many times: Who’s that old person looking at me?” he writes. “In this book I am going to tell you that the person with gray or thinning hair, wrinkles, dark spots, sagging skin, a slight stoop, cloudy vision and ears that may need fine tuning is you. But I am also going to tell you the truth about this new normal, formally known as geezer-dom: you don’t have to act your age. You don’t even have to feel it. And if it does attempt to elbow its way into your life, you do not have to pay attention.”

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Abigail Seaberg is a freelance journalist based in San Diego. She covers subjects as diverse as oncology research, local news, celebrity updates, and health and wellness topics.

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