My conversation with the late Lauren Bacall about living long: “I still have curiosity. I still have ambition”

I profiled Lauren Bacall, who died earlier today at age 89, for an Orange Coast Magazine cover story in 2004.

Our conversation took place shortly after she had turned 80.

Her reaction to being an octogenarian?

“It just seems ridiculous to be that age doesn’t it? No one in my family ever lived that long. I think luck has something to do with it, and I hate to say it, but I probably have more of the genes of my terrible father because he lived to his 90s. On my mother’s side, everybody died young.”

Besides the genes of her father, who abandoned the family when she was a small child, what was Miss Bacall’s secret to remaining so productive and youthful?

“I take pretty good care of myself; I haven’t beaten myself up too much,” she told me. “And I work all the time, and I think one has to keep going. I can’t imagine retiring and doing nothing and going to lunch. My God, I would hang myself. I still have curiosity. I still have ambition. I still want to do good work, so I think I should continue as long as I can.”