SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Hollywood’s starmakers always are on the lookout for a fresh new face and they found one in Mae Laborde, albeit of the wrinkled variety. The 97-year-old Laborde is just four years into her acting career and hotter than ever. Standing 4-feet-10, with snow-white hair, rosy-red cheeks and a sweet-as-peaches-and-cream smile, she’s becoming TV’s ubiquitous grandma.
She was “Wheel of Fortune’s” Vanna White (40 years in the future) for a recent episode of “MADtv.” She was the stunned fiancee whose boyfriend finally gets around to proposing in a jewelry commercial. She faced down the Grim Reaper himself in a bit about elderly people without health insurance for “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
She’s also been a cheerleader on ESPN, appeared in a Lexus commercial, had a recurring role on Spike Feresten’s “Talkshow” and had a role in a JP Morgan Chase Bank commercial.
“Now that one paid good!” says Laborde, eyes twinkling under knitted brows and behind rhinestone glasses. Then, lowering her voice conspiratorially, she adds, “I mean like a few hundred dollars.”
A five-year-old boy who survived miraculously after falling nine floors was probably playing on a mountain bike when he toppled over the balcony railing, police said Thursday.