Interview: Janie Haddad Tompkins on Age
She somehow answers our questions even though actresses stay young forever!
Welcome to Three Quora Questions, our series of interviews in which a guest expert joins me to field strange and interesting questions posed on Quora.com (the internet’s oddest knowledge repository).
Janie Haddad Tompkins is an actress known for her voice work on the long-running animated series Regular Show, as well as podcasting alongside her husband, comedian Paul F Tompkins. If you want to start spooky season early, Janie and Paul are doing Halloween movie watchalongs every Thursday in October for premium subscribers of their Substack newsletter, Weekend Water with Paul F. Tompkins & Janie Haddad Tompkins.
I’ve been a big PFT fan for years, but I’m glad to have found Weekend Water because now I also get to enjoy Janie’s thoughtful writing! I really liked her recent pieces reflecting on aging and on the passage of time via 9/11, so I reached out to see if she would answer three questions about age. She agreed, and now we are officially Substack Friends—the best and most enduring sort of friendship.
Without saying the number, how old are you?
JANIE: At the grocery store the other day, Don Henley’s song “The Boys of Summer” came on, and I allowed myself to bop out and sing along as I grabbed more steel-cut oatmeal. I passed two other dudes full-on doing the same thing. Just three solo shoppers (of a certain age) gently acknowledging one another’s previous coolness, quietly singing, “Out on the road today, I saw a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac…” on a Saturday afternoon while searching through the expiration dates on bread.
Searching for what, exactly… Hope?
Have you ever lied about your age? Why?
JANIE: Ok, I have a mildly humorous (to me, and to me only probably) shtick on my STAY F. HOMEKINS podcast where I “pretend” I’m a permanent ingenue. For example, I might gush over how wondrous it is that my infant brain can somehow recall the Challenger exploding. It’s a very dorky little humor bit, but for the most part, I don’t think about numbers so much as “phases.”
Except, I’ve noticed that the “number” has become very “important” at all my healthcare visits, which is unsettling. Like, I’m told by this age, you need such and such test. And by that age, you gotta start with X, Y, and Z checkups and biopsies and scans and blood work baselines. I don’t know about y’all, but the hyper-focus on numbers by society and the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and beauty industries is enough to give me a dang complex! I’m just trying to live my stupid silly life, PEOPLE!
Which actresses aged like a fine wine?
JANIE: All actresses who are still working and aging are our best vintages! Aging, much like being a performer, is a privilege. What could be better than to work as an actress and be active in storytelling until one’s final act?
But also…
Jodie Foster.
I mean, come on! She damn glows. It’s like she’s just getting started. What is a better roadmap for getting older as an actress than that?
Woo! Thanks for answering/sharing/being funny, Janie!
Janie, Have you seen the Substance yet? I think you’ll love it and I’d love to have a conversation about it with you!!