Thelma’s June Squibb on Becoming an Action Star in Her 90s: “Age Is Not to Be Feared”

Does it take a certain mindset to be an action star? “I think it does,” says Thelma’s June Squibb, with a steady deadpan gaze. “And I have it.”

The 94-year-old actress is not kidding: In Thelma, we see the titular badass take on many classic action movie tropes, including car chases, computer hacking, and even an explosion or two. Okay, the car chase is actually a scooter chase, and Thelma might not run as fast as Tom Cruise. But in the action comedy directed by Josh Margolin, a grandmother’s quest for revenge gets the full Mission: Impossible treatment, and its star was more than up to the task.

According to Squibb, being an on-screen daredevil like the greats of cinema means being “physically ready to do things that you wouldn’t be normally you wouldn’t be asked to do. I’ve used my body always — I danced for years, and I still swim and I’m doing Pilates now. I’ve never not used it. But [making Thelma] still called for things that I hadn’t really done before, on film or anywhere.”

Squibb’s journey to this moment is remarkable: Beginning her career as a theater actor, she made her first film appearance in 1990 at the age of 61, and played a series of supporting roles over the following decades in movies and TV shows including In & Out, About Schmidt, Far From Heaven, and Girls. She received an Oscar nomination for her work in 2013’s Nebraska — but Thelma is her first real starring role.

In the film, a phone scam tricks Thelma into sending $10,000 in cash to an unnamed post office box. While the police are useless and Thelma’s daughter (Parker Posey) and son-in-law (Clark Gregg) start to doubt if Thelma should continue to live alone, Thelma’s determined to get her money back, with a little help from her hapless twenty-something grandson, played by Fred Hechinger (the Fear Street trilogy).

Hechinger, sitting beside Squibb for our interview, is a bit in awe of his co-star, especially when it came to the more physically intense sequences. When production began, he says, “You didn’t know how much you were going to do for your own stunts, and then progressively every week you did more and more. It was a total snowball.”

And Hechinger wasn’t the only one Squibb impressed on set. One bit of action Squibb was particularly pleased to execute on her own was a “bed roll” (you’ll know it when you see it). “I really did it pretty good — you start on one side, roll over and end up on the other side,” she describes. “I was really proud of that one because they really thought I couldn’t do it. They all said ‘Oh, sure, go ahead. You try it,’ and I did it once and then they were, ‘My God, she can do it.'”

Squibb credits stunt coordinator Ryan Sturz with helping her through those sequences, even the driving. “I couldn’t stop the scooter very well [at first],” she says. “I finally ended up doing it pretty well.”

Speaking of people who do their own stunts: The power of Tom Cruise looms over Thelma, especially in an early scene of grandmother and grandson watching Mission: Impossible — Fallout together. “Those movies really inspire me, and Josh [Margolin] talks about how the perseverance of him doing his real stunts is so connected to the perseverance of this character fighting,” Hechinger says.

Apparently, getting the rights to that Mission: Impossible scene wasn’t a sure thing — Hechinger remembers that “the day that we got the approval, it was like Christmas morning.” If they hadn’t been able to use the clip, he says, the back-up plan was for the characters to talk generally about “that fella on the tv… It would’ve been nowhere near as good.”

Squibb agrees. “No one would’ve believed that.”

While it’s images of Cruise that lead Thelma to take action on her own, he’s not the first star Squibb mentions when asked about her personal inspirations. “I’m thinking Bruce Willis in Die Hard,” she says. “He did wonderful things, I thought.”

Thelma (Magnolia Pictures)

Making Thelma has had a real impact on both Squibb and Hechinger, the latter of whom was really moved by the way Margolin drew on his own relationship with his grandmother (also named Thelma) in writing and directing the film.

“I think I want to tell stories that are always this human and messy,” Hechinger says. “They don’t have to be autobiographical, but so personal that everyone feels like ‘We need to tell this story. We need to be a part of this.’ Everyone that made it felt this urgent need to be involved.”

As for Squibb, the experience “makes me realize I can do another film. There are still things that I can do.” (She in fact has another starring role in the works: She plays the titular Eleanor in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great.)

Plus, she says, the fact that “Josh was using an older woman to tell the story, that meant a lot to me. Anytime that I read a script and there’s an older woman, it excites me. Age is not to be feared and it’s kind of exciting. Things happen.” Such as becoming an action star in your 90s.

Thelma arrives in theaters on June 21st.