He’s been an international cultural icon for decades, decorated with a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, while also being named a Disney Legend. But recently, Dick Van Dyke went a step further and made history after being nominated for a Daytime Emmy at 98 years of age.
The announcement was made on Friday, April 19, in recognition of his performance in a guest star role on Days of Our Lives. Starting in September 2023, Van Dyke played Timothy Robicheaux in a four-episode arc that put him alongside Drake Hogestyn, with whom he shared a friendship off-screen.
Dick Van Dyke makes history at 98 with a Daytime Emmy nomination
This is Van Dyke’s second brush with a Daytime Emmy nomination. Back in 1984, he outright won an Emmy for Outstanding Performer in Children’s Programming. He had similar fortunes in 2015 with an Emmy for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program. These accolades celebrated his performances in CBS Library: The Wrong Way Kid and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey’s Pirate Adventure respectively.
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But Days of Our Lives has seen Van Dyke become the oldest person to ever receive a Daytime Emmy nomination. It’s a role that Van Dyke might not have landed if he continued with his laid-back approach to job hunting.
“As a businessman, I’m not much good,” he admitted in an interview for CBS’s Sunday Morning in December 2023. “I would do a movie and come home, and just sit down and wait for the phone to ring. I wasn’t aggressive. I was out of work a lot because I didn’t go out and look for it.”
The Disney Legend continues to keep himself busy
Before landing the Days of Our Lives gig, Van Dyke tried a different approach. “I said, ‘Don’t you have any parts for old people? Come on give me one,'” he recalled, sharing when he approached his gym buddy and future co-star Hogestyn. “And he took me seriously and got me a part!”
During that December feature, CBS aired a two-hour-long tribute to Van Dyke, featuring archival footage and live performances of acts from across his career, which began in 1947. At the time, even after so many acknowledgments and accomplishments, the honor was surreal.
“You think, ‘I don’t deserve this,’ but it’s difficult to say how I felt,” he explained to People at the time. “I came home, and I said, ‘You know something? It’s going to be a couple of days before this actually sinks in that it happened.’ I never expected that kind of recognition. My whole life went before me. I didn’t realize I had done so many things while I was 75 years in show business.”
Now, the highly decorated Dick Van Dyke has done one more thing and become the oldest actor to receive a Daytime Emmy Nomination!
