Norman Lloyd worked with Orson Welles in the 1930s, with Alfred Hitchcock in the 1940s and with Judd Apatow in 2015, when he was 100. He died in May 2021 at 106, which makes him the longest-lived well-known Hollywood actor of modern times. A small number of stars have reached or passed 100, and their careers run like a history of the film business.
1. Norman Lloyd (1914 to 2021, aged 106)
Lloyd was a founding member of Welles’ Mercury Theatre and fell to his death from the Statue of Liberty as the villain of Hitchcock’s Saboteur in 1942. He produced Alfred Hitchcock Presents for television, played Dr Daniel Auschlander in St. Elsewhere in the 1980s, and appeared in Trainwreck at 100. He was still playing tennis in his late 90s.
2. Olivia de Havilland (1916 to 2020, aged 104)
Olivia de Havilland was Melanie in Gone with the Wind and won two Best Actress Oscars, for To Each His Own and The Heiress. In 1943 she sued Warner Bros to get out of her contract, and the court ruling that bears her name ended the studios’ habit of extending contracts as punishment. She lived in Paris for more than sixty years and died there in July 2020, having outlived almost everyone she had worked with.
3. Luise Rainer (1910 to 2014, aged 104)
Luise Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar two years running, for The Great Ziegfeld in 1937 and The Good Earth in 1938, the first actor to win two in a row. Her Hollywood career was over within a few years, and she spent most of her long life in London. She died there in December 2014, days before her 105th birthday.
4. Kirk Douglas (1916 to 2020, aged 103)
Kirk Douglas made Spartacus and Paths of Glory and broke the Hollywood blacklist by putting the blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo’s name on the screen credits of Spartacus. He survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and a severe stroke in 1996, wrote more than ten books afterwards, and died at home in Beverly Hills in February 2020. His son Michael announced his death.
5. George Burns (1896 to 1996, aged 100)
George Burns had a comedy act with his wife, Gracie Allen, in vaudeville, on radio and on television. He won an Oscar at 80 for The Sunshine Boys and played God in Oh, God! at 81. He had booked a show at the London Palladium for his 100th birthday. He reached his birthday in January 1996 but was too frail to perform, and died seven weeks later.
6. Bob Hope (1903 to 2003, aged 100)
Bob Hope hosted the Oscars nineteen times and spent half a century entertaining American troops abroad, from the Second World War to the Gulf. He turned 100 in May 2003, when several US states declared Bob Hope Day, and he died at home in Toluca Lake two months later. Asked where he wanted to be buried, he is said to have told his wife: “Surprise me.”
7. Gloria Stuart (1910 to 2010, aged 100)
Gloria Stuart made films in the 1930s, including The Invisible Man, and then left Hollywood for decades of painting and printing. James Cameron cast her as the 101-year-old Rose in Titanic, and at 87 she became the oldest person nominated for an acting Oscar at the time. She died in September 2010, three months after her 100th birthday.
8. Betty White (1922 to 2021, aged 99)
Betty White’s television career began in the 1930s and ran through The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland. A film celebrating her 100th birthday was already scheduled for cinemas when she died at home on December 31, 2021, seventeen days before she would have turned 100.
Gene Shalit, the Today show’s long-time film critic, joined the group in 2026. He died in June at 100, having reviewed many of the films these actors made.