Comedy icon Carol Burnett said she still feels like she’s only 11 as she prepares for her 90th birthday.
Speaking with People’s magazine, she said: “I still feel like I’m about 11, but I’m amazed. It sure went fast.”
“But I’m glad because I’ve got all my parts – got my hips, I got my knees and I’ve got my brain, so I’m happy about that,” she added.
On April 26, Carol’s birthday, NBC will air a pre-taped star-studded retrospective in her honor.
In the new interview, the actress recalled the beginnings of her career.
She shared how she grew up in LA where she “used to pretend to be on a radio show.”
“I would yell out the window: “Now ladies and gentlemen, we have a young girl who is going to sing here without any musical accompaniment,”‘ she recalled.
“One time, a man next door said: ‘Will you turn that goddamn thing off?’ And I thought: ‘I’m a hit. They think it’s real.’”
While other performers started when they were young, she only discovered her skills in college.
“I was pretty much of a quiet student all through grammar school, junior high and Hollywood High. I would kid around with my friends, the neighborhood kids, stuff like that. But I never really thought about it until I got to UCLA and I was in an acting class,” she shared.
“A lot of the kids at the class were doing heavy, dramatic stuff and I thought, I can’t do that. So I picked something light and they laughed. That’s when the bug bit,” Carol expressed.
She eventually rose to fame and landed a major role in the 1959 Broadway musical Once Upon A Mattress.
The comedian hopes to be remembered by the fact that she “made people laugh, made them feel good when they might have been down,” she said.
“In my fan mail, many say it was the only time the family would get together, to watch and laugh. And that sometimes they were lonesome and were cheered up by our show. That’s a good feeling,” she added.
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