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Rita Wilson On Life After 50: 'Get Ready, It's A Blast'

Rita Wilson, seen here performing in March, is the editor-at-large of the Huff/Post50 section of The Huffington Post.
Michael Buckner
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Rita Wilson, seen here performing in March, is the editor-at-large of the Huff/Post50 section of The Huffington Post.
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I cannot tell a lie: Rita Wilson is an actor-singer-producer who's done all manner of interesting things, but is for me most warmly recalled for her unforgettable explanation of the plot of An Affair To Remember in Sleepless In Seattle. The film (which also stars her husband, some guy named Tom Hanks) has plenty of good lines, but it's hard to find one more driven by divine delivery than Wilson's description of the blanket over Deborah Kerr's "shriveled little legs."

But now, Wilson is the editor-at-large for Huff/Post50, The Huffington Post's section for people over 50, which recently launched a fiction section. Wilson was on Tell Me More on Friday, where she talked to NPR's Michel Martin about her life as an actress and an editor.

Martin asked her whether she worried at all about being part of a site with "50" right in the title, given that Hollywood is notoriously hard on women as they get older. "No, I didn't," Wilson said. "For one thing, I think film is very much like that, but I think theater is completely different. ... I think being over 50 is completely liberating. I want to say to everybody out there who is listening who is not [over 50]: get ready, it's a blast. All the things that you cared about before that you thought were important, they aren't. How much you weigh, how taut your upper arms are, all that stuff doesn't matter. It gives way to something that is far more satisfying. I really think that being 50 is the bomb."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.