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The name’s Van Dyke…Dick Van Dyke.
Dick Van Dyke has revealed that he “almost” played James Bond after Sean Connery retired from the role in 1971 – and he still regrets turning down the opportunity for one major reason.
“Is it true you could have almost become James Bond?” Al Roker asked the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” star during a special interview with “Today” on Tuesday.
“I almost did,” Van Dyke, 99, responded. “[Producer] Albert Broccoli came to me and said, ‘Would you like to be Bond?’ And I said, ‘Have you heard my British accent?’”
Although the “Mary Poppins” star considered becoming the next 007, he decided against it because the role would have been too much of a change from the family-friendly roles he was known for, and fans might not have “accepted it” from him.
Van Dyke acknowledged, however, that playing Bond after Connery’s departure would have certainly been “a great experience.”
Elsewhere during his chat with Roker on “Today” this week, the “Dick Tracy” star opened up about his upcoming milestone birthday on Dec. 13.
Despite being almost 100, Van Dyke insisted that he has no plans to retire.
“I don’t want to,” he said while promoting his new book, “100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life,” ahead of its release on Nov. 18.
“I mean, it’s my hobby,” Van Dyke added. “It’s my life. I love it. I’m looking for work right now.”
The “Night at the Museum” star previously reflected on his upcoming 100th birthday – and the challenges that come with living to such an impressive age – in an essay he published for The Times last week.
“It’s frustrating to feel diminished in the world, physically and socially,” he wrote on Nov. 13.
“I get invites to events or offers for gigs in New York or Chicago, but that kind of travel takes so much out of me that I have to say no,” Van Dyke lamented. “Almost all of my visiting with folks has to happen at my house.”
Still, the “Bye Bye Birdie” actor makes a point to “hit the gym three times a week.”
“I don’t know why this is something I still want to do, but it is,” he shared. “If I miss too many gym days, I really can feel it – a stiffness creeping in here and there. If I let that set in, well, God help me.”
As for the secret to his longevity? Van Dyke thanks his 54-year-old wife, Arlene Silver, whom he first met at the SAG Awards in 2006 and married six years later.
“Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters my age, which is still saying a lot,” he wrote in “100 Rules for Living to 100.”
“Every day she finds a new way to keep me up and moving, bright and hopeful and needed,” Van Dyke added, noting that their “ongoing romance” is “the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch.”