These days, Carol Burnett is continuing to thrive.
In fact, the comedy legend recently shared insight into staying active at 91—and the answer is quite simple.
“I guess just be glad you're still around and you still have all your faculties,” Burnett told E! News while on the red carpet at Variety’s Power of Women event in Los Angeles Oct. 24.
After more than 70 years in Hollywood, the Annie star has faced her share of ups and downs. But when it comes down to it, Burnett—who was an honoree at the star-studded event alongside Amy Adams, Zoe Saldana and Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria—would offer one piece of advice to her younger self: “Don't give up.”
Indeed, she recalled feeling discouraged when she just started, “and then something in me said, ‘Don't give up.’”
But while she’s still going strong onscreen in shows like Palm Royale, the Emmy winner previously teased that the Apple TV+ may be her swan song. That is, of course, as she put it to Variety in an interview published Oct. 23, “Unless there’s a cameo or something fun!”
She stressed her decision to stop acting would be on her terms, just like it was when it came time to pull the plug on her beloved variety series Emmy-winning Variety show after 11 seasons in 1978.
“I called it quits,” she explained, “because I thought we had done just about everything we could do, and we had started to repeat ourselves in sketches. I said, ‘I want to leave before the network starts flicking the lights on and off and saying, ‘Goodbye. Don’t do this anymore.’ I wanted to say goodbye.”
--Reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows