NEED TO KNOW
- Bette Midler is reflecting on her age, just weeks after the loss of Diane Keaton
- At the recent Hulaween gala to benefit the New York Restoration Project, Midler acknowledged she will soon be turning 80
- “I’m no longer a spring chicken,” Midler said of her age
Bette Midler is reflecting on turning 80 and mourning the recent loss of her The First Wives Club co-star, Diane Keaton.
On Oct. 24, 2025, at the annual Hulaween gala to benefit the New York Restoration Project — which Midler founded in 1995 as a way to broaden access to green spaces for underserved communications in New York — Midler touched on her age.
Calling the 30th annual event “moving,” Midler joked while accepting the gala’s Catalyst Award, “I know what you’re thinking: you’re 77, you’re nearly 80. Do you need a chair? No.”
“But yes, it’s true — I’m no longer a spring chicken,” Midler, who is 79 and will turn 80 in December, continued. “I’m no longer a summer chicken. I’m not even a fall chicken. I’m an endangered chicken at this point. However, I am honored to accept the Catalyst Award tonight because I did do something. I did. I actually did do something.”
Elsewhere in her speech, Midler said, “You know, when you’re old, you remember the old things better than you remember yesterday. You don’t remember what you ate yesterday, but you remember what it felt like to dig in a filthy park and to remove debris and to be amongst people who were like-minded. You really remember that.”
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First Wives Club.
Getty
She went on to thank those from her past to whom she said she owed “a tremendous debt.”
“They were miracle workers, like Scott Matthis, who died last year, who helped start [New York Restoration Project]. He had built a model in California called California Restoration Project, California Environmental Project. And he had also invented Adopt a Highway. He put our initial group together and he found our very first executive director, Joe Pupello,” Midler said. “Joe Pupello, I got to say — we’ve had some good ED’s, we’ve had some stars. Joe Pupello was my very first star. He was a visionary, and he was a fire friend. And he was the first person to say to me: ‘Clean, green open space is a right, not a privilege.’ “
Midler’s appearance comes just weeks after she issued a statement following the news that her old friend Diane Keaton had died in California at age 79 on Saturday, Oct. 11.
The Hocus Pocus alum, who starred with Keaton in The First Wives Club, called the actress “brilliant, beautiful [and] extraordinary” in an Instagram post.
Bette Midler; Diane Keaton.
Monica Schipper/Getty; Photo by Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
“The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died,” Midler wrote, alongside a black and white photo of her former costar and longtime friend, posing in a suit and hat.
“I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me,” the Broadway star continued. “She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was…oh, la, lala!”
