Dane Cook Doesn’t Want Anyone to Know How Old He Is

For the first 20 years of his comedy career, Dane Cook never told anyone his age. “I never said it. I wouldn’t put it on the internet before you could find it on the internet,” he told Max Amini on the Wild Truth podcast. “You didn’t know how old I was because I want to be ageless.”

Cook has comedy reasons beyond avoiding questions about his age-appropriate spouse. To illustrate, he told a story about hanging backstage with octogenarian Jerry Lewis. “He was still performing in his late 80s,” Cook said. 

“I go to his performance one night, and I’d seen him a dozen times over a couple-year period,” Cook remembered. On the tour, Lewis would do some of his greatest hits shtick, then conduct a 40-minute Q&A session with the audience. One night, the venue gave Lewis the “wrap it up” light after only 20 minutes. Cook went backstage to see his idol. 

“Jerry’s sitting there by himself, and he’s stewing,” Cook said. “He’s a little surly looking. And he grabs me by the arm, and he goes, ‘They cut my fucking time! It was supposed to be 40!’”

Lewis’ anger struck Cook. “He was so upset. His whole career, everything he’d done — he wanted that extra time as a performer.”

Cook realized he’d be exactly the same way when he was an old-man comic. “I remember right in that moment being like, ‘That’s going to be me. I have a love of the game,’” he said. “I’m 32 years in, and I feel just as effervescent and excited to perform as the first day. If I’m sick, if I’m having a rough day, whatever, when I’m walking toward that stage, I have a gratitude that washes over me.”

It all ties back to Cook being secretive about his age. He wants to appear ageless because that’s the way he wants to feel on stage. “So when I’m up there, I’m connected — like Johnny Carson said — to my whole life. I’m a kid, but I’m also a man who’s been through a lot. Traumas and love and breakups and it’s all happening right in that moment.” 

“Our full-time job is to keep the kid alive,” agreed Amini.

For sure, replied Cook, although there are moments when it pays to remember that he’s in his 50s. He told Amini about a recent gig at the Laugh Factory when he jumped off the stage, “a woohoo moment in a bit,” in which he launched himself into the air and landed at the feet of the person in the front row. “I came down on my patellar tendon,” he confessed. “That’s the only thing about getting a little older. You got to make sure you stretch out before you hit the stage.”