'Nice Old Lady' Betty White sure doesn't act like one

BEVERLY HILLS -- The last time Betty White bothered checking, she discovered that she'd been in the acting business for more than 60 years. Furthermore, it's a career that didn't begin until she'd reached adulthood.

"It's so silly," chortles the former Golden Girl. "They haven't gotten wise to me yet! I love it -- I just love it, and I'm so lucky to still be working."

White, now 87, makes her latest appearance on movie screens this summer as Ryan Reynolds's feisty grandmother in Disneys' The Proposal, and she starts work soon on another film for that studio. And, yes, she's surprised that people still want her.

"Usually at my age, the jobs don't come along, so I'm delighted," she says. However, even though the gods continue to smile on her, she tries to be realistic. "They're going to catch up with me one of those days, so I'm going to stay running as fast as I can!"

Thanks to DVD and cable reruns of those old TV shows, her younger self is still a highly visible presence on the small screen -- whether as the man-chasing Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a series that flourished nearly four decades ago, or more recently as the naive but lovable Rose on Golden Girls. And if those two landmark series aren't enough, you can also check out her involvement with The Odd Couple, Matlock, Love Boat, and Ally McBeal, The Simpsons and Boston Legal.

"I'm kind of getting used to it. What else can you do when you've been around for 60 years? But when I'm flipping the dial, I run into shows from I don't know how many years ago, and I look at them and think, 'I never did that!' So it's like watching somebody else, and it's fun."

Betty White is in what she calls her "nice old lady mode" as she chats with Canwest -- but that's only one side of her. "I've also been mean and crazy and bawdy," she confesses cheerfully. She cites the horror spoof Lake Placid, in which she kept feeding live victims to a voracious giant reptile. "I apologize for my language in that one!"

In The Proposal, she's an enthusiastic spectator at a live performance involving a male stripper -- but even so, she's definitely in a more lovable mode with this film, portraying an Alaska grandma who helps sort out the combustible relationship between Sandra Bullock as an aggressive New York book editor and Reynolds as her embattled flunky.

"You get a lot of scripts mailed to you and some of them aren't very good. But this was an old-fashioned romantic comedy. It didn't have any violence, it didn't have a lot of the garbage they usually think they have to put in. And then when I heard that Sandra and Ryan were going to do it, I was delighted."

Good writing has always been a priority with White. She cites Golden Girls, which continues to enjoy a huge international following years after it went off the air. Even so, when she first learned it was going to be reissued on DVD, she couldn't imagine that there would still be an audience for the sexually voracious Blanche (Rue McClanahan ), the witty, sarcastic Dorothy (Beatrice Arthur) and her tell-it-like-it-is mother, Sophia (Estelle Getty) and for White's own character -- the dim-witted Rose.

"After our first run, we were on four times a day for years, and now we're still on. So I wondered who was going to buy the DVDs -- yet they keep selling like mad all over the world. It's just amazing, but that's what good writing does. The relationships between these characters work in any language."

White rejoices in her own good health, but she gently acknowledges that old age brings sadness because of the loss of friends and colleagues like Getty and Arthur.

"Losing Estelle was tough and losing Bea was really tough, but we had to let them go. They were so sick. Bea was in terrible, terrible trouble and in pain that the morphine couldn't reach. So it never makes it easy.

"I couldn't feel better. I'm so blessed with good health -- and don't think I don't appreciate it -- which gives you the energy to be able to do what you're able to do. Yesterday, I did 60 TV interviews and I went home last night and I was trying to tell my golden retriever that I'd done 60 interviews, and he said, 'I don't care, mommy. You're home.'"

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 2, 2009 E9