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8 Celebrities Still Doing What They Love After 90

Catch up (if you can!) with Mel Brooks, Rita Moreno, Dick Van Dyke and more

spinner image from left to right james hong then quincy jones then rita moreno
From left: James Hong, Quincy Jones and Rita Moreno.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images / Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images for Entertainment Studios / Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic

In a new video called #Rethink Aging, The Jeffersons star Marla Gibbs, 91, says, “Ninety-one is the new 30!” In April, Carol Burnett and Willie Nelson, still creatively vital, join the nonagenarian club. Burnett's NBC special Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love airs April 26, and Nelson will celebrate his big day with a Hollywood Bowl birthday concert with Neil Young, Tom Jones, Snoop Dogg, Beck and more. And he's not stopping there: He's also got a brand-new album, I Don't Know a Thing About Love.

Here are eight of the top talents over 90 whose creative energy we can all envy — and emulate if we can.

Quincy Jones, 90

spinner image actor quincy jones
Tom Cooper/Getty Images for Global Down Syndrome Foundation

“People keep tellin’ me I’m turning 90 this year [on March 14],” the musician-producer who earned 28 Grammys, a Tony and seven Oscar nominations, posted on Facebook recently. “But what they don’t know is that I feel like I’m turning 50! They must be real convinced though because apparently I’m getting a 90th-birthday Concert at the Hollywood Bowl w/special guests on July 28 & 29th, 2023!!”

He's also producing a movie musical adaptation Alice Walker’s The Color Purple starring Taraji P. Henson, 52, and Louis Gossett, Jr., 86, arriving in theaters Dec. 20.

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Mel Brooks, 96

spinner image actor mel brooks speaking on stage during the fiftieth anniversary world premiere of the producers
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for TCM

Far more spry than his 2,000 Year Old Man character, Brooks narrates his latest hit TV series, History of the World, Part II (a job he gave Orson Welles in the 1981 original, Part I). It stars Marla Gibbs and Wanda Sykes (in the ’70s sitcom parody Shirley!), plus a parade of younger Brooks-idolizing actors. Brooks got his start on TV 70 years ago as a writer for Sid Caesar’s comedy-variety show (along with Woody Allen and Neil Simon), then went on to cocreate the 1960s TV cult classic Get Smart. So it’s gratifying to see that after an Oscar, four Emmys, three Tonys and three Grammys, his TV career is still going strong.

​Don’t miss this: 95 Things We Love About Mel Brooks on His 95th Birthday

William Shatner, 91

spinner image william shatner on stage at the twenty twenty two los angeles comic con
Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage

When Star Trek was canceled in 1969, Shatner was broke and living in his truck. Maybe that’s why he’s worked so hard ever since, most recently in the autobiographical documentary You Can Call Me Bill, premiering March 16 at South by Southwest. Asked whether he plans to retire, Shatner told AARP, “Why? What are you gonna retire to? I mean, I don't fish and don't play golf. I ride horses a lot. But what are you going to do? You can't sit and rock. Well, you can sit and rock, but you have a guitar in your hand.”

​Don’t miss this: MOA: 8 Questions for William Shatner

Rita Moreno, 91

spinner image rita moreno speaking at the world premiere opening night of eighty for brady
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Society

Sure, she lit up the screen in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story in 2021 and the current hit 80 for Brady, but what has she done for us lately? A whole lot, it turns out: Moreno joins Helen Mirren in the upcoming action film Fast X (May 19) and plays an astrological reader who causes a Freaky Friday–like body swap in Netflix’s upcoming original movie Family Leave.

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James Hong, 94

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Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

The veteran of four other best picture nominees (Chinatown, Bound for Glory, The Sand Pebbles and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing) enjoyed a ribbing by Jimmy Kimmel at the 2023 Oscars ceremony, where his latest movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, won bigI might be the only living, working actor that has worked with Groucho Marx and Clark Gable,” he told Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Listen for him (along with Jackie Chan and Dustin Hoffman) in Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024), one of five upcoming projects.

Dick Van Dyke, 97

spinner image actor dick van dyke at the debut of michael feinsteins new supper club feinsteins
Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

The 1960s sitcom king shocked us by dancing up a storm in 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns and again as the Gnome on The Masked Singer in 2023, making judge Nicole Scherzinger cry. But he’s not quitting the biz: His latest project is the movie Capture the Flag, about aging Korean War vets competing for the right to raise the flag at their retirement community, in which he stars with Barry Corbin and Louis Gossett Jr. “There’s a fear of getting old among the young,” he told NBC News. “I want them to know that old age can be wonderful. It’s the best time of my life, by far.”

​Don’t miss this: Dick Van Dyke’s 10 Greatest Movies and TV Shows

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Norman Lear, 100

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The All in the Family auteur celebrated his 96th birthday by accepting AARP’s first TV for Grownups honors in 2018. He said, “When people ask me how old do I feel, I always say I think of myself as the peer of whoever I’m talking to. If you’re 26, I’m 26; if you’re 86, I’m 86; if you’re 12, I’m 12. I have a hard time being a grownup.” This year, Lear noted that in 2020 he became the oldest person to win an Emmy. “How about that?”

Estelle Parsons, 95

spinner image actress estelle parsons
Noel Vasquez/Getty Images

The star of Roseanne and its update, The Conners, told Closer Weekly that she got her theater pal Gene Hackman a role in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, the movie for which she won an Oscar. “I kept trying to talk him out of wanting to be a movie star,” she said. Hackman, 93, is now retired and living in New Mexico. But retirement is not for Parsons. “I hope to produce a show this fall. I also do more directing now. Why wouldn’t I keep working? I think everybody in theater wants to keep working until they drop dead onstage. That’s the ideal. Die with your boots on!”

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