By
Jane Mulkerrins
Last updated at 10:57 PM on 7th April 2011
Trooper: Betty White, at her 89th birthday, has been immortalised in a comic book, won countless awards, starred in her own calender and is now back on our screens
Betty White made her name back in the innocent days when TV stars knew their place.
‘We considered ourselves lucky to be on the box, never complained if a critic didn’t like us, dressed modestly and were always on our best behaviour in public,’ she recalls primly.
Now she’s 89, a big name for more than 40 years with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls and Malcolm In The Middle, and she doesn’t have much time for today’s celebrities.
The drinking, the misbehaving and the endless self-analysis . . . she can’t bear any of it. ‘They party too much, don’t learn their lines, are unprofessional and they grumble about everything. I think they are terribly ungrateful,’ says Betty, her eyes flashing.
‘I cannot stand the people who get wonderful starts in showbusiness, and who abuse it. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, for example, although there are plenty of others, too. They are the most blessed people in the world and they don’t appreciate it.’
Now Betty is back on our screens in the U.S. TV show Hot In Cleveland, which revolves around three fabulous Los Angeles women of a certain age who are best friends (Valerie Bertinelli, British actress Jane Leeves — former star of Frasier — and Wendie Malick).
Their lives are changed forever when their plane — headed for a girls-only celebration in Paris — unexpectedly lands in Cleveland, not the most glamorous of American cities, and they discover themselves in a new ‘promised land’.