07/01/2016 AT 07:40 AM EDT
Legendary actress Olivia de Havilland will be ringing in her 100th birthday today and she tells PEOPLE she'll be celebrating the milestone event with dinner and drinks with "dear, dear" friends.
In next week's issue of PEOPLE, the five-time Oscar nominee opens up about her life, career and romances.
Born in Japan of English parentage, naturalized and raised in Los Angeles, de Havilland has been an internationally recognized film star for over eight decades. Since her 1935 debut in Midsummer Night's Dream and eight on-screen romances with Errol Flynn, she's been slapped around by Bette Davis inHush Hush Sweet Charlotte and starred in Lady In A Cage with James Caan and opposite Montgomery Clift in The Heiress. Probably best known for her role as the sweet Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind, now de Havilland says she's "honored" to be called the last star of Hollywood's Golden Age.
De Havilland, who has lived for over 60 years "in Paris in a little white house, as tall and narrow as a chimney," says she is "content with the role that life has given me: a centenarian!" Asked if there's any advice she'd give to her younger self, she replies, "Take a long leave of absence from the Warner contract and go to Mills College, where the scholarship I had won in 1934 is still waiting for me!"
In her exceptionally frank back and forth, Hollywood's most elegant legend discusses many aspects of her personal and professional life, her friends, fabled romances (they're not whom you expect) and touched on a number of her film roles - including two surprising classics she turned down: It's A Wonderful Lifeand A Streetcar Named Desire.
In the midst of her Hollywood career and a divorce, de Havilland uprooted to France.