With more than four decades of Hollywood success under his belt, comedian Billy Crystal has lots of good showbiz advice to share with others. But what exactly is the greatest life lesson he’s learned over the years?

“Oh, don’t let anything get in your way. Just keep pushing it forward. That’s all you can do and just treat it with a sense of humor and just go, ‘All right, how do I fix this if something gets screwed up?’ Just bounce around, life’s a pinball machine and you just hit the bottom and boom of the paddle throws you back up sometimes. So that’s what it’s like,” Billy, 70, exclusively revealed to Closer Weekly at the Friars Club Honors Billy Crystal event held at NYC’s Ziegfeld Ballroom on Monday, Nov. 12.

Billy and Janice Crystal
Getty Images

During the special event earlier this week, Billy was honored with an award recognizing his impressive career. When asked what the moment meant to him, Billy told Closer, “Well, it’s an organization, The Friars, that I’ve always wanted to be part of. When I was a little kid and really didn’t understand what they did but the fact that Sammy [Davis Jr.] and Frank [Sinatra] and Jack Benny and Milton Berle hung out and made jokes about each other and drank and ate and it was the camaraderie of the few people in the world who when you think about it, actually get up on stage and poke fun at it and try to give you the truth about things in our own way. So to be part of that after all these years and the fact that [this honor] only been given eight times, it’s very special to me,” he said.

Billy was accompanied by his wife of 48 years, Janice Crystal, at the outing. In a previous exclusive interview with Closer, the When Harry Met Sally… star gushed about spending life with his college sweetheart. “This past couple of years has been just one great thing after the other, working, working, working. So I think it is time to stop working for a while — we talked about going to Europe for like six or eight weeks, and renting a house and just [relaxing], that’s it. I’ll grow a beard! I’ll be 18 and Janice will walk by me in a bikini, and I will follow her and [our relationship] will start all over again. I can’t bear to think of life without [her],” he told us in 2014. So cute!

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