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94-Year-Old June Squibb Does Her Own Stunts in ‘Thelma,’ a Sundance Spin on ‘Mission: Impossible’


June Squibb, the 94-year-old Oscar-nominated actor, insisted on doing her own stunts for the Sundance film 'Thelma,' a spin on 'Mission: Impossible.'

It’s fitting that Squibb, who gets the first starring role of her seven-decade screen career, was willing to perform action scenes that could have left her with titanium hips, because “Thelma” cheekily references and riffs on the gravity-defying sequences of “Mission: Impossible.” In one scene, Squibb hijacks an electric scooter and has a vehicular showdown in a retirement home with Ben, played by the late Richard Roundtree in his final screen performance. Margolin, who previously filmed his grandma for a series of short documentaries, inserted some of her unscripted quotes into the movie, and admits that he put “a very solid amount” of himself into Thelma’s grandson, Danny, played by “White Lotus” breakout Fred Hechinger.

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