Sexuality should stay a part of life even in old age and not be a taboo, insists the 70-year-old actress Lilo Wanders. While in younger years it tended to center on passion and wild infatuation, the focus later shifts to companionship and enjoying each other’s company, Wanders explains in an interview with the pharmacy magazine “Senioren Ratgeber.” She is married and has three children. She adds: “A couple who meets in a retirement home should be allowed to share a room. It must be respected that intimacy and sexuality are possible even at an advanced age.”
When a taxi driver asked her, “Weren’t you once Lilo Wanders?” she admits she was offended at first, but then she saw potential and thought to herself: “Someday that will be the title of a book or a stage show! Now it’s both.”
In her autobiography (Amazon affiliate link), due to be published on September 17 by Goldmann Verlag, Wanders describes her not entirely easy childhood: “My father died very young, my mother made me her adult point of reference, and my brother with a severe disability died tragically.” She also reflects on her TV career: her talk show “Wa(h)re Liebe” ran from 1994 to 2004 as an educational program about LGBT issues, advocating for equality for people with different identities and sexual orientations. Couples began to talk about their inner lives, she notes: “It was certainly gratifying for me to have been the catalyst for this increased openness about intimacy.”
Marcy Ellerton
