Given the steady rise in global life expectancy, and the enduring cultural fascination with exceptional longevity, one might reasonably assume that portrayals of centenarians (and even older individuals) would be relatively common in cinema.
In reality, films featuring credible depictions of centenarians remain exceedingly rare. Potentially highlighting inherent ageism in media. When characters aged 100 or older do appear, their longevity is typically attributed to supernatural or fantastical causes, e.g.,vampirism, a fountain of youth, immortality, or other extraordinary interventions.
Consider films such as Twilight with 100-year-old sparkling teenagers, The Age of Adaline with a thunderstruck 108-year-old frozen in her mid-30s or The Man From Earth with a several thousand year old man who cannot age. Could these characters be considered accurate portrayals of centenarians? Hardly. Still, they highlight an inert fascination with longevity that exists both within people and popular culture. We want to live long but be in great shape when we do so too.
More grounded representations of centenarians in fictional films are, again, few and far between. Below are some of the most notable examples, though additional instances may exist in lesser-known movies.
Little Big Man (1970)
Dustin Hoffman as 121-year-old Jack Crabb. Source: The movie Little Big Man (1970) and National general pictures
Jack Crabb tells his life story being raised by native Americans, later riding with the cavalry with George Armstrong Custer and tricking Custer and his men to ride into a trap at Little Big Horn and losing. The movie is driven from the perspective of Crabb, a white man, who is fiercly loyal to the native Americans and their heritage. To note is that Crabb is allegedly 121 years old when he tells his life story. Was the story true or was it a case of a greatly exaggerated claim and stolen valor?
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)
Cicely Tyson as 110-year-old Jane Pittman. Source: The movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)
Jane Pittman turns 110 years old in 1962, becoming a supercentenarian. Pittman retells her life story to a journalist and depicts events that happened from being born into slavery, emancipation, losing her husband and adopted son and most prominent the struggle for equality of African American US citizens in the 1960s civil rights movement. Pittman would probably not be a verifiable supercentenarian given the difficulty to validate people who were former slaves.
Titanic (1997)
Rose Dawson Calvert, a centenarian due to turn 101 recounts her experiences of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and her short romance with a fellow passenger, Jack, who perished in the cold water while awaiting rescue. Rose had previously struggled with a life of constraints but following the sinking she adopted a new personality and went on to live a fulfilling life. The centenarian Rose drops off a lingering memory in the form of a precious necklace at the Titanic sinking site, promising to never let go. Calvert would also likely be unverifiable given there not being a link between her early-life documentation and the documentation post-Titanic as she had kept that part of her identity secret for 84 years.
The Green Mile (1999)
Paul Edgecomb, 108 years old and in good shape for his age, lives in a retirement home and retells the time of when he worked as a prison officer at a prison peniteneary in his 40s. He befriended and witnessed an innocent man being executed for murdering two children. The man in question appeared to have supernatural powers of healing – both curing diseases and resurrecting a mouse, Mr. Jingles. Mr. Jingles goes on to live for over 60 years. Edgecomb was in the radius of the healing of the mouse and may have been exposed to the same life-expanding powers as his rodent companion. I put Edgecomb here because it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that he just had the right genes for exceptional longevity and was in fact unaffected by the healing. Edgecomb would be verifiable given that he lived in the US, which has plenty of sources available for researching people born in the late 1800s (and even earlier). Still, if he was infused with magical mouse healing powers, one would probably start to question his claim once he hit 115+ and still in great shape.
The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013) & The 101-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared (2016)
Allan Karlsson is a centenarian living in residential care in Sweden and decides to escape the care home to go on an adventure. Along his adventures he encounters several comedic situations, all while recounting his past life where he was once a spy and ran into all sorts of historical events and figures, some of whom he directly caused and influenced. Karlsson would definitely be verifiable given the robust public record-keeping system in Sweden.
Across these films, centenarians are typically portrayed as living history books. Their advanced ages serve primarily as a narrative device enabling accounts of lived historical experiences. They function as storytellers whose significance lies in past accomplishments rather than present ability. Only on occasion do we see portrayals of very old individuals who continue to actively partake in events, as with Jane Pittman’s depicted act of defiance during the Civil Rights movement or Allan Karlsson’s ongoing (if chaotic) interventions in present events.
Centenarian Actors
Centenarian actors are about as rare as fictional centenarian characters. When individuals of such ages do appear on screen, it is most often within documentaries focused on longevity itself. For example, Jeanne Calment appeared briefly in Vincent and Me at age 114, talking about having met Vincent van Gogh. While noteworthy, documentary appearances fall outside the scope of this discussion.
-
- Dick Van Dyke in 1964
-
- Dick Van Dyke in 2024
Among actors reaching ages of 1oo or beyond, several merit mention. Dagny Carlsson (1912–2022), widely known as the world’s oldest blogger at the time of her death, had a brief cameo in The 101-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared. Pierre Gérald (1906–2012) appeared in two minor film roles released when he was 101. Johannes Heesters (1903–2011) likewise performed in films released during his centenarian years. Norman Lloyd (1914–2021), whose career began in the 1930s, continued acting at age 100. Finally, Dick Van Dyke (born 1925), who recently turned 100, has continued to make occasional screen appearances.
What we can learn is that centenarians are under-represented in movies. Given that there are tens of thousands of centenarians alive globally today, at least frequent and nuanced portrayals would be both realistic and culturally valuable. While such roles are often performed by younger actors using makeup and prosthetics, it remains important that these characters are given presence, and to portray them in a positive light.
The increased number of appearances of actual centenarians on screen is encouraging. As longevity continues to increase globally, one may reasonably hope that cinematic representations of extreme old age will become more varied, visible, and authentic.
Feature photo made with generative AI.
