Anabel Graetz has always worked in the arts, but she won her first screen part when she was 62 – in a fire safety short with Tom Bosley, best known for playing Howard Cunningham in the TV series Happy Days. The film work has since rolled in. This summer, at the age of 80, Graetz cleared her debts for the first time in her life. “I am earning more money than I ever have,” she says. “It feels like a whole new world.”
Graetz’s turning point came when she made it on to the books of a casting company in Boston which helps studios and production companies hire actors. “They started calling me for auditions, and the shock was that the third time I auditioned, I was cast.” Still, she says, “I didn’t think I had a big future in it.” But she kept responding to calls to audition. “And I kept being cast.”
