‘Hot in Cleveland’ Actress Wendie Malick Says She Still ‘Feels Like a Kid’ Ahead of Her 70th Birthday

Wendie Malick has a simple antidote to life’s stresses. “Go outside!” she enthuses to Closer Weekly, on newsstands now. “It’s so good for you. Get out to a park or someplace with trees. Go for a walk, shut everything off and just be.”

As the actress, best known for her roles in the television comedies Hot in Cleveland and Just Shoot Me!, approaches a new milestone this year, she takes a similarly sanguine approach.

“The fact that I have a 70th birthday coming up is sort of surreal to me because I don’t feel it,” admits Wendie about her Dec. 13 birthday. “I still have two living parents — my mother is 92 and my dad is 100 — so I think that’s part of the reason I still feel like a kid. I think the whole deal is to try and be the best you can be at whatever age you are and not to insanely hold on to what you were 10 years ago.”

For Wendie, that means sticking to a healthy pescatarian diet, frequent exercise and lots of time with her horses and dogs. “My knees aren’t as good as they used to be,” she admits, “but I still get out and walk with those dogs every morning. I ride the horses and just try to make the most of what I got while I’ve got it.”

The impulse to seize the day extends to her work. Wendie takes a dramatic turn in Deranged Granny, which premiered September 12 on Lifetime. “I’ve played a lot of extreme characters. I find them much more interesting,” she says about portraying a grandma with a vendetta. “Sometimes with the intention of loving deeply, you can cross a line that puts you in dangerous territory.”

Like her former Hot in Cleveland costar Betty White, Wendie insists she’ll never retire. “She’s in her 90s and still having the time of her life,” Wendie says. “She was also the one who really, truly made me realize that there is a third act and it can be as juicy as the first two.”

— Louise A. Barile, with reporting by Katie Bruno

For more on this story, pick up the latest issue of Closer magazine, on newsstands now.