‘I feel like I’m about 13’: Dick Van Dyke reflects on turning 100

Dick Van Dyke, pictured in the film Mary Poppins alongside Julie Andrews, has talked about approaching the age of 100 (PA)

Dick Van Dyke has said he believes the secret of living to an old age is by not feeling anger or hate, as the veteran actor nears his 100th birthday.

The Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang star is due to reach the milestone age on December 13, and said he is not bothered about being remembered.

But he said: “But it’s the music, the music we leave behind.

“For as long as children are proudly belting out their new word, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, or singing and skipping along to Chim Chim Cher-ee, the most important part of me will always be alive.”

He told US magazine People he was unsure why he had got to such an old age but said he had always had “a brighter outlook”.

He said: “I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides — and hate.

“And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.

“There were things I didn’t like, people I don’t like and disapprove of. But I never really was able to do a white heat kind of hate.”

I feel really good for 100. Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood

Van Dyke, who released a new book – 100 Rules For Living To 100 – this month, appeared in a Coldplay music video last year.

He told the magazine: “I feel really good for 100. Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood.

“I feel like I’m about 13.”

He also said he had enjoyed “a wonderfully full and exciting life, that I can’t complain.”

Van Dyke’s career has spanned more than seven decades and earned him an array of awards including four Emmys, a Tony for Bye Bye Birdie and a Grammy for the Mary Poppins soundtrack.

He was inducted into the Television Hall Of Fame in 1995 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.