Lily Tomlin on age (she’s 70!), on being out and the 1975 Time magazine cover that wasn’t

Lily Tomlin works so much and seem so youthful that it’s hard to believe this brilliant actress is actually 70 years old.

She says in the new issue of The Advocate that while it’s not something she dwells on but, “it’s something my trainer dwells on. I try to keep myself in shape and I schedule these hours, but I can get through about half an hour now, and then I throw my arms up, which is not part of the training. And the trainer, well, you know how they are. They shame you.”

Miss Tomlin has had a personal and professional relationship with writer Jane Wagner for decades and explained why she never did a big “coming out” interview: “There never seemed to be a need. I mean, people weren’t clamoring to know. At the beginning it was something that no one did. Of course, being a woman, it was a little different. In 1973, I was on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson said, “You’re very attractive, yet you’ve never married.” And I said, “Well, you’ve done it a few times—how is it working out?” and he ran with that, you know, because it was a funny thing about him. … But, you know, it was the sort of question everyone asked a woman in those days. Those days—they still do! The last time I was on The View, Barbara [Walters] said to me, “Now, Lily, we’ve known each other a long time, and you’ve never married. Is that because you just haven’t found the right man?” And I just looked at her and I said, “Oh, Barbara, we have known each other a long time, and we all know that’s not the reason.” And she changed the subject.

Ellen DeGeneres very famously came out on the cover of Time magazine in 1997 but Miss Tomlin reveals that she could have been the first 22 years earlier: “There were some fans who really wanted me to come out. And some media. Time magazine offered me the cover if I would come out. That was in 1975. I don’t think anybody was coming out yet then, and I frankly was not interested in being typed as the gay celebrity. I think what Ellen did was incredibly brave, and she paid a price for it—and she did it about 20 years after I got that offer.”

She ended up getting the cover anyway, just a few years later, but based on her professional life, not her personal life.

“It’s very strange when people ask questions about what it was like back then, because what they don’t get is that, as a society, gay people weren’t out,” she added. “There was no need unless you were an activist, I mean professionally. There were people who didn’t fake anything privately, you know, like a double life or anything, but your sexuality was not a part of your public profile. And it is all so different from today.”