So, why hasn't Debbie Reynolds hung up her sequined gowns and kicked back to enjoy 58-odd years of making a living from the biz they call show?
"Ummm, well, I don't play golf."
OK, then. But of course there's also the financial legacy of three husbands who did their damnedest to ruin and/or humiliate her, as well as the resulting kids to look after. You might know one of them, Princess Leia, the runaway royal on Star Wars with bagels for a hairdo?
Anyway, to help to cover a couple of those old bills and hopefully a few future ones, Reynolds is stopping by for a glitzy show at the Aotea Centre tonight, a rare, and only getting rarer, chance for film fans to get up close and personal with a real live star from the golden era of movies.
For those who know the 74-year-old only through Carrie Fisher, her light-sabre-waving daughter, that was the era before whizz-bang computer generation. Back then audiences had to make do with things like plots, scripts and, in her case, maybe a little song and dance. Oh, you wouldn't understand. Go Google it or something.
But expensive exes aside, Reynolds, star of such classics as Singin' in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, is still acting it up because she loves to.
"Oh, I've given up on men, I don't do dating, now I keep myself busy doing what I want to do - I'm alone, but not lonely you might say - and I just love the stage. I've been performing since I was 16 and I don't see any reason to stop."
And just in case any male floozies are harbouring naughty thoughts, she's carrying a few reminders to keep her on the straight and narrow: a diamond ring made from earrings she refused to return to first husband, Eddie Fisher, the dastardly cad who gracelessly dumped the former Miss Burbank for Elizabeth Taylor; and a gold watch from third husband Richard Hamlett, the one she doesn't talk about, which she wears as a necklace.
But even if those marital disasters once reduced her to living in a Cadillac, it's still been a fairytale ride from the innocent teen who lived on dirt floors and entered the beauty pageant that earned her a movie contract only because it meant a free feed, a blouse and a silk scarf. Only in Hollywood.
Star of movies' golden era loves it all too much to stop
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