Dick Van Dyke

Fifty-four years separate his two Mary Poppins credits. In 1964 he was billed twice on the same film, as Bert and as Mr. Dawes Sr., and in 2018 he came back to Mary Poppins Returns as Mr. Dawes Jr., which means he has now played both a character and that character's son, half a century apart. Very few careers offer a fact like that.

Richard Wayne Van Dyke, born in West Plains, Missouri in 1925, is an actor, comedian, singer, dancer and writer, and the mix matters: the comedy is physical and the physicality is trained. He came up through the Broadway stage, and won a Tony there before Hollywood took him seriously. The Dick Van Dyke Show, from 1961, made him a household name as Rob Petrie, and his awards include Emmys for lead actor in a comedy series, a Grammy and that Tony. Bye Bye Birdie reached the screen in 1963 with him as Albert Peterson, Mary Poppins followed in 1964 and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968.

What kept him working was refusing to retire into nostalgia. Diagnosis: Murder gave him a second long-running television lead as Mark Sloan from 1993. He played Cecil in Night at the Museum and again in Secret of the Tomb, voiced Mr. Bloomsberry in Curious George, took a run on Days of Our Lives, and turned up as himself in The Great Buster: A Celebration, a tribute to the silent comedian whose physical tradition his own comedy belongs to. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995, named a Disney Legend, and given the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2013 and the Kennedy Center Honors.