Ann-Margret is unstoppable. At 81 years old, the film and music icon shows no signs of slowing down as she’s just released her new album, Born to Be Wild. For the project, the Bye Bye Birdie star teamed up with some of the music industry’s biggest names, like Pat Boone, the Who’s Pete Townshend, and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, to record old standards that she’s always wanted to perform onstage, but never had the chance to. “I had a great time doing it,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I’m thrilled everybody wanted to do something. What can I say, I’m so thankful.”
The cover of Born to Be Wild features an image of Ann-Margret from the ’60s astride a Triumph motorcycle, as she was once the face of the brand. But the lifelong motorcyclist admits that she wasn’t always such a daredevil. Growing up in Valsjöbyn, Sweden, before moving to the States, she was “taught to curtsy when I met someone, to curtsy when I said thank you, and that was different from everybody here.” She says with a laugh, “I certainly found that out!” But even with such a prim and proper upbringing, the actor confesses that she always had a taste for adventure. “My uncle, my mother’s brother, had a big motorcycle. And Valsjöbyn was 10 minutes away from Norway, so my uncle would take me on these great rides to Norway,” she explains. The road they would travel cut through the region’s stunning countryside, she recalls. “You look to the right, and it was the mountains. You look to the left, it was the fjords. And of course, coming to America, I have those memories, and that never went away, that thing of being on top of a motorcycle.”
Ann-Margret has been cruising around on two wheels ever since, effusively describing her lavender Harley-Davidson decorated with tiny white daisies as “shining brilliantly” in the sun during our conversation. And it’s not the only Harley in her life—the singer also has a 19-year-old cat named after the motorcycle manufacturer—a gift from her late husband of 50 years, Roger Smith. She admits that Smith, who passed away in 2017, “wasn’t thrilled that I loved [motorcycles] so much,” but she adds, “This is how smart he was. He had never been on a motorcycle before, but he bought himself one and got on it and started riding with me because he knew how I loved them. That’s a smart man.”
The Grumpy Old Men star notes that the secret to her and Smith’s long and happy marriage was knowing one another inside and out. “You just know what that person thinks and you would never do something that you know he is so against,” she says—unless that thing is riding her Harley into her golden years. “When he retired, he sold his motorcycle, and I said, ‘No way am I going to sell my bike,” the singer says jovially. “Every now and then I will take it out, knowing, of course, that Roger has warned me.” She still finds herself hopping back on her bike because of “the excitement! The speed! That danger!” But, she admits, she’s not a total rebel, saying, “I don’t want to get any tickets though!”
At the pinnacle of her career, Ann-Margret was an inescapable pop culture presence, often referred to as “the female Elvis Presley.” Throughout the decades, she’s appeared in seminal roles in films like Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, Tommy, and Carnal Knowledge, to name just a few. In her autobiography, Ann-Margret: My Story, the actor described how her job demanded that she be able to transform from “Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot-Banshee” when she stepped on set. Perhaps that’s why the actor says she still doesn’t recognize that person onscreen. “I don’t know who that is. I still don’t know who that is,” she reveals. “Look, I’m a crazy woman. So it’s fun for me to act and be another person. Way deep down inside, I’m still that girl that curtsies.”
While Ann-Margret has long been Hollywood’s golden girl, she’s also faced her fair share of struggles and setbacks. In 1972, during a performance in Lake Tahoe, she fell 22 feet off an elevated platform and suffered a broken left arm, cheekbone, and jawbone, which required her to get extensive facial reconstructive surgery and wire her jaw shut. In 2000, she was thrown off her beloved Harley while riding in rural Minnesota, resulting in three broken ribs and a fractured shoulder. She’s also spoken openly in the past about her struggles with alcoholism, depression, and infertility. When asked how, despite all of that, she has found the strength to persevere, she explains, “Well, ’cause it’s not gonna get me down. I’m just gonna get up on that bike again. I’m going to get up from whatever happened to me. I will get up and go.”