Age has always been just a number and now 80 is the new 60

Older performers are making a comeback, with singers, actors, writers and activists carrying on well into their eighties, and that is an excellent thing, writes David Lister

Feisty octogenarians (clockwise from top left): Ian McKellen, Gloria Steinem, Dennis Skinner, Maggie Smith, Clint Eastwood, Margaret Atwood, Michael Caine and Germaine Greer (Getty/PA)

Viewers of Mrs America on BBC2, the fascinating story of second-wave feminism, its advocates and opponents, in the US in the seventies, will have been captivated by Rose Byrne’s portrayal of Gloria Steinem. The feminist icon is shown with her distinctive mix of political ideology and personal vibrancy. What many viewers might not realise is that Steinem is just as ideologically committed and just as active now at the age of 86.

Her most recent book, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! was publicly praised by a legion of fans ranging from Emma Watson to Janelle Monae. And next month she will appear in a livestreamed zoom event, ‘Love, life and rebellion’, for the How To Academy with actress Thandie Newton, to talk about her activism, literary output and a life fighting for gender equality.

Age is clearly no barrier to her ongoing influence and public profile, campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the last US presidential election, just as she did for Robert Kennedy in 1968. But she is far from alone in showing that a decade in which it was always believed you were meant to fade into second childishness, as Shakespeare put it, is now as fruitful a time for being on the public stage as your thirties and forties. Who can doubt this when they look at the continuing literary output combined with environmentalism and other activism of eighty year-old Margaret Atwood? Likewise, Germaine Greer, still an author, public speaker, feminist intellectual and controversialist at the age of 81.

As with activists, so with actors. They can literally be on a public stage. We know that great actors do continue working into their eighties. One only has to look at the prolific output of the likes of Dame Judi Dench, 85, Dame Maggie Smith, 85, and Vanessa Redgrave, 83. And there are, of course, male counterparts who won’t tolerate the notion that advanced age has to mean retirement – the likes of Michael Caine, 87, or Clint Eastwood, 90.

Both are still officially "active" in the movie industry. Caine though, has hinted, not totally convincingly, that retirement may not be that far off, but the decision may not be his. He stated: “I’ve always said that you don’t retire from movies, movies retire you. They haven’t retired me just yet. It’s coming…getting up at 6.30 and learning six pages of dialogue… well it’s not my idea of paradise.”

But while we have long accepted that the big stars of stage and screen will continue to entertain us well beyond pensionable age, it has generally been assumed that roles should be age appropriate. An 80-year-old actor could hardly expect to play Hamlet. Now, even that is changing. Sir Ian McKellen, 81, is preparing to do just that, 50 years after he last played the role. He will break with all tradition to bring a more experienced, more mature perspective to the role of the young prince in a forthcoming production at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.

Sir Ian McKellen is about to play Hamlet again, a role he first performed 50 years ago (Getty Images)

I confidently predict that this could open the floodgates. Just as it first became commonplace, thankfully, for Bame actors to play leading Shakespearean parts and more latterly for women to play Hamlet and other roles (recently Glenda Jackson, 84, as King Lear) so post-McKellen I envisage octogenarian thespians rubbing their hand in glee at the thought of bringing new interpretations to Hamlet, Mark Anthony and, though one gulps a bit at the implications, even Romeo…

After colour-blind casting and gender-blind casting, we are on the verge of age-blind casting. Sir Derek Jacobi, 81, might of course point out that he was ahead of the curve, playing Romeo’s best friend Mercutio in a production of Romeo and Juliet by Kenneth Branagh in 2015. A subsequent poll of public opinion in The Stage showed that 67 per cent of those polled thought this piece of casting was a good idea, and by implication a good idea that great actors of advanced age should play the parts of much younger people.

Playwriting, too, does not have an age limit. Only lockdown prevented Leopoldstadt, the latest play by Sir Tom Stoppard, 83, from continuing the acclaimed run, which had only just started. Sir Tom, in an interview with Douglas Murray in The Spectator, when the play opened, acknowledged some of the constraints of being an octogenarian writer. He said: “I don’t work as hard as I used to because the physical limit is different nowadays. I used to work two shifts a day very happily…”

Steinem: 'I’m beginning to realise the pleasure of being a nothing-to-lose, take no s**t, older woman'

But more pertinently perhaps, he sees no diminution in his curiosity about the world in his eighties. “I get up and I read [the newspapers and magazines] …I want to know who is writing this novel or that biography. I’ve got an appetite for knowing what the next wavelet of culture has brought ashore. I don’t know why. I meet people – as a general rule nearly all the people I know don’t read what I read – and I think ‘What a strange way to live, what you don’t seem to know about’.”

The 80th birthday simply is no longer a moment to succumb to dotage. Bob Dylan hasn’t quite reached that birthday yet. But he is in his 80th year and has released a stunning new album Rough and Rowdy Ways, which is garnering some of the best reviews of his 58 year-long recording career, Rolling Stone describing it as “an absolute classic – it has the bleak majesty of latter-day Dylan albums… yet it goes beyond them, tapping even deeper into cosmic American mysteries.”

Once live performance is allowed again, he will resume touring, with the younger crew Paul McCartney (78) and Mick Jagger (76) also promising to return to the stage with three-hour long, high energy shows. Sir Cliff Richard celebrates his 80th in a few months’ time and, yes, he aims to do so with live performances, bemoaning only that he now has to postpone them because of coronavirus until next year when “we can party together in 2021 for an even bigger and better 80th birthday celebration”.

I’m less scared of embracing uncertainty. I’ve had time to learn to forgive and the time to reflect and learn from my experiences. I know what I need so I can jettison what is unnecessary

Performers of a different kind, those in the political sphere, no longer just become recluses and write their memoirs after their 80th birthday. Former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke, who turned 80 earlier this month and who has just been nominated for a peerage, may have stood down at the last election, but he is constantly in demand on TV and radio as a political pundit.

And, of course, were it not for the electorate failing to vote him in at the election last December, Dennis Skinner, the outspoken, left-wing firebrand, known as the Beast of Bolsover, would at 88 still be representing the Bolsover constituency in the House of Commons, and would have brought up his half century, having been the local MP since 1970. Even without a seat, he remains a constant and acerbic commentator on social media on political affairs.

In America Jimmy Carter, US president in the 1970s, was at the age of 95 still making public appearances and teaching Sunday School as late as last November. I met him when he spoke at the Hay Festival in 2008. He was then 83, and little did I realise that he was a mere spring chicken.

Fed up with words like elderly and vulnerable during lockdown, Joan Collins went to St Tropez to have some fun (Getty) (Getty Images)

As she who is determined never to grow old, Joan Collins, 86, says, the word elderly seems to be in the eye of the beholder and rarely in the self-perception of the person saddled with that adjective. She wrote in The Spectator: at the height of lockdown: “I’ve always thought western society was terribly ageist, and I don’t just mean showbiz folk but across the board. Then the UK government insisted the over-70s, horrible expression, were part of the vulnerables, an even more horrible expression, and should remain in lockdown, the most horrible expression of all, until a vaccine is found. This was utter discrimination against the hardy individuals who have no health issues. But more harmful was bolstering the existing belief among the general public that the old should keep out of everyone’s way.”

Indeed, so fed up did she become with words like “elderly” and “vulnerable” being used of her age group during lockdown that she has now decamped to St Tropez to have some fun.

Dame Esther Rantzen danced around her garden in a dressing gown when she turned 80 (PA)

For those who can’t play Hamlet or write a feminist treatise, fun seems to be the other way of expressing oneself on reaching 80. TV celebrity and well-known campaigner for abused children Dame Esther Rantzen is reported as having run round the garden in her dressing-gown on her 80th birthday, a modification at least on how she celebrated her 50th, running round the garden stark naked.

Contemplating different attitudes to being 80, she points out that Hollywood siren Mae West at 80 had a harem of young bodybuilders. Now it’s more how one dresses that marks out how one feels. She is quoted in the Mail, saying: “I’m wearing black trousers with a white stripe down the side and black and white trainers. Leisure wear, isn’t that what they call it? I remember when my grandmother was this age, she dressed like an old lady.”

Octogenarian Jane Fonda at a climate crisis protest in Washington last year (AFP via Getty) (AFP via Getty Images)

Dame Joan Bakewell, 87, was appointed back in 2008 as the voice for older people by the then Labour government. She has campaigned to have more older women on television (the never-diminishing appearances of Mary Berry, 85, must give her some comfort) and remains a powerful voice for the dignity and resilience of older people. During lockdown she publicly called on Boris Johnson’s government to stop treating the elderly like “a crazy old people’s club” and let them work out how to keep safe from coronavirus themselves.

Jane Fonda, when she turned 80 a couple of years ago, wrote a lengthy screed on the pros and cons of being an octogenarian, reflecting: “I’m less scared of embracing uncertainty. I’ve had time to learn to forgive and the time to reflect and learn from my experiences. I know what I need so I can jettison what is unnecessary…I’ve learned to be more tolerant and patient. I have less ego at stake in outcomes.”

The nature of love, too, is viewed differently as one gets older. There may be less ‘ego stake in outcomes’ there as well. Germaine Greer, in a particularly lyrical moment, summed it up thus: “The older woman’s love is not love of herself, nor of herself mirrored in a lover’s eyes, nor is it corrupted by need. It is a feeling of tenderness so still and deep and warm that it gilds every grass blade and blesses every fly. It includes the ones who have a claim on it, and a great deal else besides. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Gloria Steinem is less lyrical, but probably on the button, when she says: “I’m beginning to realise the pleasure of being a nothing-to-lose, take no shit, older woman.”