Marla Gibbs, 94, on her life of 'breaking barriers,' still feeling like she's 30

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You’ve watched her grace sitcom sets for decades, and at 94, Marla Gibbs is ready to tell her whole story.

In “It’s Never Too Late” (out now from Amistad), "The Jeffersons" star gets candid about the rocky journey to Hollywood stardom, including an unstable childhood and abusive marriage to her high school sweetheart. She also brings readers alongside her advocacy for Black representation in the arts, from public ventures like Vision Theatre in Los Angeles to her work on set to fight for equal pay and a seat at the table.

If there’s a thesis to “It’s Never Too Late,” it’s that Gibbs, even in her 90s, isn’t ready to slow down. In fact, she writes she’s still spiritually 30 years old. 

“I’ve learned not to worry about age and simply think about what I want to do with my life and know that I can still do it,” Gibbs writes. “No matter what age I am, if I want to accomplish something, I’m going to give it a try – and since I’m thirty, I’m expecting to do it.”

Gibbs was born in 1931 to parents in a “loveless” marriage and writes that she and her sisters were later molested by her mother’s boyfriends. Gibbs writes that she vowed “not to repeat generational patterns” but that “the choices I would make in my husband and friends would reflect my desperate need to be loved.”