Dick Van Dyke is indubitably grateful for his full life.
As the legendary actor prepares to turn 100 on Dec. 13, he looked back at his extraordinary life and career—as well as looking ahead of his milestone day. Although he admitted, the biggest surprise to him is “The fact that I made it."
“I feel really good for 100,” Van Dyke told People in an interview published Nov. 25. "Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood.”
Though he admits that he’s hard of hearing these days, as well as a bit off-balance, the Mary Poppins actor is young at heart. As he puts it, “I feel like I’m about 13.”
And he credits wife Arlene Silver, 54—who he wed in 2012—with helping him stay youthful.
"She's responsible for keeping me in the moment," he added. "She kept me happy every day of my life, every day. She's a joy. She can get me singing or dancing and she carries so much responsibility ... I'm just lucky."
And though Van Dyke—who shares kids Christian, 75, Barry, 74, Stacy, 69, and Carrie Beth, 63, with late ex-wife Margie Willett—opened up about his life’s many twists and turns and detailed how they shaped his outlook in his new book 100 Rules for Living to 100, he has a theory about what’s kept him running all these years.
"People say ‘What did you do right?’ I don’t know. I’m rather lazy, " the Dick Van Dyke Show star admitted to People. "I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides — and hate. And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.”
But he doesn’t have to work at his naturally sunny perspective. According to him, it’s comes as naturally as saying “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
“I think I’ve decided that people are born with an outlook," he explained. "I just think I was born with a brighter outlook. I look at the horizon. I think some people are born just to have to fight against a downward spiral. And after 100 years, I think I’m right.”
Though the 99-year-old recognizes that he has more life behind him than in front, the thought of death doesn’t rattle him one bit.
“When you expire, you expire," he said. "I don’t have any fear of death for some reason. I can’t explain that but I don’t. I’ve had such a wonderfully full and exciting life. That I can’t complain.”
After all, he also knows he’ll live on with his onscreen legacy.
“What I left in the way of children's entertainment and children's music — that’s my legacy," he declared. "I don’t think remembering me is that important. But it’s the music, the music we leave behind. For as long as children are proudly belting out their new word, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,’ or singing and skipping along to ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee,’ the most important part of me will always be alive.”