"It is surely a comfort to anyone still awaiting mega-success to know that June Squibb was in her mid-80s before she hit the big time. Her role as a foul-mouthed matriarch in the 2013 film Nebraska brought her an Oscar nomination, and she had her first leading role in last year's action comedy, Thelma. Now she's playing the lead again, in the new film Eleanor the Great and she's currently in rehearsals for a show on Broadway."
"In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, Squibb plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old woman who, mourning the loss of her best friend Bessie, moves from Florida to New York to be near her daughter. Encouraged to make new friends, Eleanor goes to the local Jewish community centre to join a choir, but the woman belting out Stephen Sondheim is enough to make anyone rush for the door."
"I spent a whole day in bed with a guy. We started laughing. We don't even know each other! I just loved her from the beginning, she says, speaking via Zoom from the rented New York apartment she stays in for theatre rehearsals. All the quirks. She's just so full of everything. I mean, she's not very nice sometimes, and I like that because it gives you something."
June Squibb achieved major film recognition in her mid-80s with an Oscar-nominated role in Nebraska and earned her first leading film role in Thelma. At 96, she stars in Eleanor the Great, directed by Scarlett Johansson, while rehearsing for a Broadway show. Squibb plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old widow who moves from Florida to New York, joins a Jewish community centre choir, and is mistakenly taken for a Holocaust survivor. Grieving and lonely, she adopts her friend Bessie's survival story as her own, creating a lie that escalates when a young journalism student seeks to publicize it.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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