There’s not a lot of people who get spates of headlines and articles written about them, all with the words “kick ass” in front of their name. “I love it,” Oscar-nominated actress June Squibb tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed about her newly anointed moniker. “I’ve been telling people I will kick their ass.
” If you were among those who helped turn the new movie Thelma into an indie box-office smash over the weekend—or even just saw Squibb’s work in the film’s trailer —then you believe her promise: “Oh, I could do it. Yes.” At age 94, Squibb is an unlikely action hero—and yet, an undeniable one.
The actress, who received her first Oscar nomination in 2014 for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, stresses that she was actually 92 (and turned 93) when she filmed Thelma . The film, written and directed by Josh Margolin , is inspired by his own grandmother’s experience being conned out of thousands of dollars by scammers, after they called her pretending to be him asking for bail money because he had been arrested. In the film, Thelma is mortified when she learns that she had been targeted because she was elderly, and easily duped.
“Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” she moans, addressing her dead husband, needing comfort after the distressing incident. Her family uses the incident as an excuse to coddle her over her old age, insisting that she can no longer care for herself. When the police tell her that getting money back is a lost cause, she takes matters .
