Age Inappropriate Casting

Stockard Channing was 53 years old when she played high school teen Rizzo in Grease.

Lol R1 I don’t mind though. She was my favorite part of the movie.

William Hickey in Prizzi's Honour.

Sally Field as Mary Lincoln

Robert Redford as a love interest to Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer.

Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle was a good 20 years too young for her role as a bored housewife.

Armie in anything. Bitch looks old.

John Amos was only 8 years older than JJ and 19 years younger than Florida on Good Times, and it worked perfectly.

16 year old Sarah Michelle Gellar played Susan Lucci’s 23 year old daughter on All My Children and stole every scene out from under her, and then won an Emmy 4 years before Susan won one.

I’m sure you are exaggerating r1 , but for the record she was 33.

3/4 of the 90210 cast.

Sherman Hemsley was 21 years younger than Isabel Sanford. Very believable.

37 year old Vanessa Redgrave as a young student at Oxford. She got away with it though, didn't she?

This is Vanessa's young and innocent expression.

I think she could pass for 20 actually.

The wooden bitch in the queens gambit can’t pass for a teen.

I have never been able to wrap my brain around Leslie Howard as Ashley in Gone with the Wind.

Stephanie Beacham was only 37 in season 1 of The Colbys, which was only 5 years older than her daughter on the show and 11 years older than her son on the show. They tried to make her look older. Then they de-aged her on Dynasty a few years ago when they had her get knocked up by Dex.

She was still the best part of The Colbys and of season 9 of Dynasty in spite of her character being age-fluid.

R10 there were worse things she could do.

Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy. Bitch was nearly 50 when she became a first time mother. A young, wacky housewife she was not.

Did anyone see The Morning Show? I thought Reese Witherspoon was 10 years too old. The character was mentioned as 40, but I suspect she was written much younger, then the age changed to 40 once Reese signed on.

Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross were born on the exact same day and are only 14 years older than Michael J. Fox. Why mess with success in this case?

80 year old Ahhhndrea Zuckerman.

Who can forget foolish ingenue Christina Crawford attempting to replicate her mother’s success on The Secret Storm?

Dorothy Zbornak’s son and daughter both looked like they were 30-35 years old and the tall ass bitch supposedly got knocked up at 17 years old, wtf.

Armie looked like a pedophile in Call Me By Your Name

G in Hillbilly Elegy, apparently playing a 50ish woman, but is really 73!

R25 Most 50 year old hillbillie women can pass for 70 plus years old. Brilliant casting, Sit your flat ass down M.

Kathleen Turner was 32 when she was cast in the DL classic PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. She so solidly plays the part that she can reasonably pass as a teenager as well as a grown women. She's even amazing with Coppola's awkward daughter, who for once was perfectly cast as her awkward kid sister. Great performance, great film.

R24 I'm gonna go you better. Armie made a 24yr old character look 32, and Timothy Chalamet was 20 playing 17 but looking 14.

Armie's going to be brought into everything forevermore, isn't he?

R28 Oh how generous of you, bitch looked 38.

Armie trolls ruin everything.

Kirsten Dunst was about 23 trying to pass as 14 year old Marie Antoinette in Sofia’s film, but she didn’t.

In his last Bond film, Roger Moore was FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD, playing actino scenes and having twenty-somethings act like he's a hot piece of ass.

And with all the tanning he'd done, he looked more like sixty-five or seventy.

I couldn’t even tell their was an age difference, maybe cast an actor that does not look old as shit for their age.

The older daughter in Poltergeist. Not really a casting mistake but a script mistake. They she is 16 and the mother is 34 I believe. So she was a teenage mom? That goes against everything the movie was trying to paint about the typical suburban family.

R23 and weren’t she and Rose supposed to be 55 when the show started? Mmmmkay.

But he was still hot r33.

R27 I love that movie.

R33 is that A View to A Kill? What a delightful disaster that movie is.

In Alexander, Angelina Jolie (born 1975) played Colin Farrell (born 1976)’s mother.

Pretty Little Liars is the winner in the TV category for this thread with ages all over the map.

Angela Lansbury got an Oscar nomination playing the mother of Laurence Harvey in [italic]The Manchurian Candidate[/italic] when she was only three years older than he was!

Judy Davis was cast to play older Judy Garland in Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. When she found out that she was going to play Judy as young as Meet Me In St. Louis her response was "How far back can you get the camera?" Judy Davis was 46 playing Judy Garland at 22 portraying a character that was 16/17. Watch the comparison below starting at 1:11

R35 Most ladies had babies very going in 1965.

"Kirsten Dunst was about 23 trying to pass as 14 year old Marie Antoinette in Sofia’s film, but she didn’t."

She was only supposed to be a teen in the early scenes, in the later parts of the movie she was playing older. I believe her more as Marie Antoinette than 35-year-old Norma Shearer in the 1938 film

He WAS a hot piece of ass.

I think I'm wrong then with my math r43. They must say the mother is 32. I know it stands out that she would have been a teenage mother.

R41 didn’t Harvey go on to fuck Lansbury look alike Hermione Baddeley.

Maureen Stapleton was convincing as Dick Van Dyke's mom in Bye Bye Birdie even though they were roughly the same age. She wore a grey wig.

"American movie star and sex symbol Marlo Manners," played by Mae West, on her honeymoon with Timothy Dalton in "Sextette" She was 84. EIGHTY-FOUR!!!

Timothy Dalton had mixed feelings about the film, but complimented West. "I admired her nerve, and enjoyed working with her - I was even interviewed by Rona Barrett in the picture! It was a real stretch for me, and, frankly, after making love to a woman in her mid-80s, I knew I could handle any assignment!"

Suzanne Somers as as teenage Suzanne Somers in her biopic TV movie.

Yeah, you’re right. I remember thinking it was weird too.

At 33, Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was fifteen years too young for the part. The unsuccessful ‘aging’ make up, which included crows feet drawn on her face with what looked like an eyebrow pencil, didn’t help.

All guest stars on the Love Boat. I said this in the other thread, but Nanette Fabray was 60 when she played a woman who discovers she's pregnant on the cruise. There are many, many others.

59 year old Cary Grant as 33 year old Audrey Hepburn's love interest in Charade. Grant initially turned down the part because he felt he was too old.

54-year-old Glenn Close playing Nellie Forbush in South Pacific owns this thread.

Lucy was 40 looked younger and was in reality pregnant. You're an idiot.

r54, if you're going to count leading men who are old enough to be the fathers/grandfathers of their leading ladies, that's most of the history of the performing arts right there.

Mrs. Mondello on Leave it to Beaver.

Rachael Griffiths as Johnny Depp's mother in Blow.

Lucy. Mame.

She was 63.

Barbra. Dolly.

She was 27.

While Lucy was too old for Mame and Barbra too young for Dolly, both movies are fun and really hold up.

I love certain aspects of "Funny Face," but Audrey Hepburn + Fred Astaire =/= a believable love match in the least. At least Buddy Ebsen made sense as hillbilly child bride Holly's husband.

Audrey H. had a long parade of age-inappropriate costars as her romantic interests, some more plausible than others. FA was the biggest & worst stretch of the imagination compared to the rest.

Humphrey Bogart came across like her dad in Sabrina

Bea and Betty were 63 when golden girls started, I don’t think it was that unusual they were playing 55 year old women in 1985.

Any young starlet they put in the role of a nuclear physicist or other scientist/academic. So stupid. Get Glenn Close or Dianne Wiest FFS.

R65, why does it have to be a white biddy?

A then 43 year old Meryl Streep as the 18 year old Clara in The House of the Spirits owns this thread.

Lol, R33 and R38.

I remember my friend at the time being so excited to see A View, but I never cared for Bond films. I went anyway, and 36 years later the only things I remember are Grace Jones's pubes poking out of her swimsuit and Tanya Roberts in a helicopter.

And three days or so after seeing the film, after spring finals, I had a thing with our state's schools' French teachers I'd volunteered for (through my French professor), where they asked me questions and I answered, all conversationally. After 36 years all I remember is them asking how the movie ended, and (remember, I don't care for Bond films) I just rolled my eyes, sighed and said "Il est reussi, comme toujours!" The French teachers collapsed in laughter, and I headed home.

The first one of you who mentions my name gets my foot up your ass.

Joan Fontaine as a teen girl in Letter From an Unknown Woman

Everytime they cast Tammy "AARP" Cruise in an action movie!

Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea

[quote] I'm gonna go you better

Oh, dear R28

The BBC's The Trial Of Christine Keeler really fucked up the casting.

Keeler was 18/19 for most of the story, and she was played by 29 year old Sophie Cookson. Keeler's pimp Stephen Ward (50) was played by James Norton. 36.

Individually the performances were fine, but trying to convey the creepiness of a 30 year age gap between a rich older man and a naive young woman just didn't work. When Joanne Whalley and John Hurt played the roles in Scandal, Whalley was 10 years older than Keeler but John Hurt was the same age as Ward.

R68 lol, you sound fun.

Maggie Smith in the earlier part of Travels with my Aunt. Oh those pigtails. Cringe.

R62 I'm gonna say "Love in the Afternoon" was even worse. I love the film but Gary Cooper was almost dead and looked it-she looked 16.

R74, I felt the same way about the recent version of Rebecca - you don't really feel the power imbalance when Max and Mrs de Winter are close in age. He's supposed to be old enough to be her dad.

The leads in he original Broadway cast of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.

Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano in Joy.

I read the book and don't remember much of the movie, but I though Meryl was miscast as the Carrie Fisher character in Postcards from the Edge. Not young and cute enough, IMO.

Mary Martin was 46 when she played youthful postulant Maria Rainer in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Her leading man, Theodore Bikel was 35. The wise Mother Superior, Patricia Neway was only 40

"Mary Martin was 46 when she played youthful postulant Maria Rainer in THE SOUND OF MUSIC"

Yeah, well she was 37 when she played Peter Pan on national TV, and he's supposed to be about 12.

Mamma Mia - the Meryl Streep character was supposed to have gotten knocked up when she was young and dumb but she would have been 35+ when Amanda Seyfried was born

Jeanette Nolan as Rock Hudson's mother in Avalanche

Gene Kelly as a 40-year-old "struggling young artist" in An American in Paris, paired with a 19-year-old Leslie Caron

[quote]Barbra. Dolly. She was 27.

Barbra was years too young to play the widowed Dolly Levi, but the overblown movie would have been deadly without her to bring it to life. So, yes, the casting worked.

[quote]Mary Martin was 46 when she played youthful postulant Maria Rainer in THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

[quote]Yeah, well she was 37 when she played Peter Pan on national TV, and he's supposed to be about 12.

She was actually 43 the first time she played Peter Pan on television in 1955. But Peter Pan is also not supposed to have tits, so why quibble about age?

Andrea McCardle in the original cast reunion of Annie.

R39. Ah, Angelina Jolie as Alexander's mother, Olympia. Not only was she the same age as her son, she spoke in a Romanian accent a la Dracula.

Every time Titanic is on TV my mother says she looks too old for him.

Leo is actually older than Kate.....he just looked like a 14-year-old lesbian and she looked like a 20-something woman

I can remember when Leo first appeared on Growing Pains. I was like is that a boy or a girl?

R91 Leo is older though? Kate was just frumpy dumpy.

I could live with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade because he was - Cary Grant. I could live with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina because he was - Humphrey Bogart. But what I could never stand or could force myself to imagine working was Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love In The Afternoon.

R94 Please, Kate is the anthesis of dumpy in Titanic.

Well I spelled that word wrong. Kate is opposite of frumpy dumpy I meant.

Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook & American Hustle - too young.

Yeah in the book Silver Linings Playbook the woman is actually like 10 years older than the man. That is why he is repelled when she starts stalking him basically. Having a 20ish Jennifer Lawrence stalk a recently dumped guy made no sense. Most guys would be happy to be stalked by Jennifer Lawrence.

In the book he has to get to know her and finds a connection in their suffering.

Fred Astaire in Funny Face was Grandpa Old but chasing 20-something Audrey.

Yikes.

Wasn’t Renee many years past Judy’s death age when she starred in the movie?

Renee actually looked younger than Judy to me. Judy looked 60 when she was 40

I'm not saying Renee was all that great in JUDY, but you kinda root for her as she too was making a comeback. It worked. Well enough.

Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard playing horny teens in Romeo and Juliet. They were 34 and 43

THREAD CLOSED.

They look like Romeo and Juliet's grandparents

[quote] Kathleen Turner was 32 when she was cast in the DL classic PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. She so solidly plays the part that she can reasonably pass as a teenager as well as a grown women. She's even amazing with Coppola's awkward daughter, who for once was perfectly cast as her awkward kid sister. Great performance, great film.

People kept commenting at the time that she looked too old to be a teenager — but she didn’t need to look like a teenager, she’s playing a woman in her 30s who goes back in time to relive her high school years. It was fine for the audience to see her as a woman while the people in the movie saw her as a girl..

Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility. Bitch, please.

R106 Yes the suspension of disbelief worked. Actually, that's what made Yentl work as well.. The other characters believed it.

33 year old cute, perky Sally Field and grouchy. worn out 60 year old James Garner, Murphy's Romance.

I think Lawrence worked in SLP. She could have married at 17 or whatever, they were tacky people. The Oscars think she worked too.

She was 39 r109.

R111 The character was 33.

[quote] So, yes, the casting worked.

No, it didn't.

Dolly is not only supposed to be middle-aged, but is supposed to be an Irish-American woman who married a Jewish man and then survived him.

oh ok r112

(oh vain of Sally. Who does she think she is CZJ?)

Florence Pugh as young Amy in Gerwig’s Little Women. Wtf.

Ann Margret in Bye Bye Birdie looked like she could smother Bobby Rydell.

Lol Florence Pugh is gross.

Patricia Bruder and John Colenback as mother/son Ellen and Dan Stewart on As The World Turns mid 60's. John was five years older.

Julie Andrews in that movie she won an Oscar for. The character she played is supposed to be much, much, much older.

Entrapment. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery. He was old enough to be her grandpa.

[quote] Ann Margret in Bye Bye Birdie looked like she could smother Bobby Rydell.

Along those same lines, who made the call to make Hugo Peabody cuter than Conrad Birdie?

A 49-year-old Madonna playing Eva Peron, who was only 32 when she died.

Babs as Yentl, the yeshiva boy. She'd have been more successful turning it into gay porn and calling it, "Bentl, the yeshiva boi" with Avigdor as his dom daddy top.

Oh Madonna wasn’t that old in 95/96. Is that a joke?

Babs was more convincing as a middle-aged yenta than as a teenage boy.

Michel Lucas starring in his own movies.

Ricky Schroder after his 18th birthday

Entrapment. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery. He was old enough to be her grandpa.

Great, great, great grandpa, thankyou!

I don’t get the Flo Pugh love. I thought she was way too hammy and contemporary in Little Women. Watching her boss fey Timmy around made it look like a lavender marriage.

Diana fucking Ross in "The Wiz".

Her advanced age was not the only thing wrong with that movie. Sidney Lumet’s surprisingly poor pacing and insistence on covering the dancers from the cheap seats does not help matters much.

I think Barbra used the fact that she was too young to play Dolly as a justification for being able to play Yentl. In the same way there are carbon offset, she had banked years from playing too young, so in cinematic terms she was now allowed to be too 9ld, but play the role.

Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in the upcoming film version -- NO.

Let's think about this: the Swanson film takes place c. 1949. Gloria Swanson was 50 that year, which would have made her 26 in 1925. Let's assume that we transpose the ages -- Glenn Close is now 73. That would make her Norma Desmond 48 in 1925. We are to believe a 48-year-old was a silent-film icon alongside Clara Bow, Lillian Gish, and Louise Brooks? These women were in their 20s (Lillian Gish would have been an elderly 32 in 1925).

I can't suspend my belief to such a degree.

Yet people will willingly pay to hear you butcher ABBA’s greatest hits.

Melissa Joan Hart in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch tv series. Was in her thirties, looked it, but we were all supposed to believe that she was sixteen years old anyway.

"Cougars" in tv and movies that are no more than two years older than the "young guy" whom they're trying to seduce, or who is trying to score with them.

Freddie Prince Jr. in teen movies. That era of teen movies was excellent, but he should've been going for older roles because he looked like he was in his early thirties by the year 1999. The same applied to Selma Blair back then.

r134 Melissa John Hart was born in 1976. The series ran from 1996-2003. Thus, she was 20-27 during its run.

Mea culpa

Not one of the Sweathogs looked a day under 25.

Helen Hunt in "World On Fire." Especially laughable when her young Nazi handler tries to blackmail her into sleeping with him: she with haggard looks, sunken eyes, Botoxx-paralyzed face. He had a mummy fetish, I guess.

[quote]Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy. Bitch was nearly 50 when she became a first time mother. A young, wacky housewife she was not.

R18 She was 40, and it was her second child. And she looked good.

James Stewart was 46 when he played 25-year old Lindbergh in The Spirit Of St. Louis. John Kerr turned down the part, Lindbergh wanted Tony Perkins to play him. Stewart eventually got it because he wanted it so bad and for other reasons, he lost weight, dyed his remaining hair blond and wore a blond rug. He didn't exactly pull off looking 25, or even 35, but he was really great anyhow.

Lucy Ricardo was supposed to be about 10 years younger than Lucille Ball.

[quote]Dolly is not only supposed to be middle-aged, but is supposed to be an Irish-American woman who married a Jewish man and then survived him.

Maybe that's why all references to Dolly's maiden name as Gallagher were dropped from the movie, you yucklehead. Whatever Thornton Wilder's reasons for making Dolly Irish in "The Matchmaker," her ethnicity is hardly a major plot point in "Hello, Dolly!" Not even on stage, where Pearl Bailey seemed to do rather well with the role.

The film Murphy's Romance is literally about an older man and a younger woman falling in love despite their age difference. No one was trying to pass off 39 yo Sally and 56 yo James as contemporaries-although, that's not much of an age difference really.

[quote]Lucy Ricardo was supposed to be about 10 years younger than Lucille Ball.

Was this really "age inappropriate casting"? At 42, she looked almost the same as she did when she was 32, or 52. for that matter. Desi Arnaz was 6 years younger than her, but he wasn't playing a character 6 years younger than his wife.

This was just pretty normal casting.

"Florence Pugh as young Amy in Gerwig’s Little Women. Wtf."

She came across way too old in the early scenes - isn't Amy supposed to be 12 when the movie begins? She certainly didn't come across as 12 with that whiskey voice

Kate Nelligan (born 1950) playing the mother of Nick Nolte (born 1941) in "The Prince Of Tides". Sure, there's a reason they call it "acting", but she's a complete fucking joke in that shitshow of a pile of garbage film. The bad wigs and makeup don't help.

I may actually detest this cunt's "performance" in this film, more than anything Debra Winger turned out.

Lucille Ball in YOUR, MINE AND OURS. Her character was supposed to be in her thirties and pregnant. But Lucy was fifty-seven.

A Botoxed-out Nicole Kidman, 47 and looking it, as 32-year-old Princess Grace of Monaco.

R42 I will never understand why they didn’t have Tammy continue to play young adult Judy.

Stockard Channing in Grease! She looked like everyone's mother instead of their HS classmate!

LOL - I just noticed #2 beat me to it. Yep! First person who sprang to mind!

Jessie Royce Landis was only 7 years old when she gave birth to Cary Grant (NORTH BY NORTHWEST).

Cathleen Nesbitt was about 8 years old when she gave birth to one of Cary Grant's parents, who was 7 when Cary Grant was born (AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER).

Doris Day was a 40 year-old virgin fending off a 58 year-old (Cary Grant) who wanted to nail her (THAT TOUCH OF MINK)

Mandy Patinkin was hot!!

Hunky Nick Robinson, though boyishly handsome, is currently playing a seventeen year old who turned 18 on The Teacher, but in real life he is 25 He has sworn that this will be his LAST teen role.

R148, I really wish they would've given the role of Grace to somebody younger, talented and up-and-coming.

"Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility. Bitch, please."

I'm going to defend this one, and the habit of casting all Austen characters with actors who are significantly older than the characters in the books.

Thompson played Eleanor Dashwood, who was 19-21 in the books, which to modern audiences is too young to be getting married, but in Regency times a girl of 20n was edging into old maid-hood and would be urged to find a husband while she still could. In those days, for a girl to hit 20 was like a modern girl hitting 30, so if we want modern audiences to understand an Eleanor Dashwood I'd cast an actress of 30. It's the same for all Austen adaptation, nobody actually casts Lizzie Bennet or Emma Woodhouse with an actress of 20 or 21*, they cast someone around 30. Thompson was 36, which makes her about 5 years too old, not 15.

Barbara Stanwyck in SORRY WRONG NUMBER. Her flashback scenes as a young college coed and bride were hysterical, since she was forty when she filmed this. Love her, but she looked FORTY. And in the scene when she meets Burt Lancaster at the dance. She says, “Mind if I cut in? It’s an old Spanish custom, the hag line!”. You can say that again. She didn’t even try to look younger.

[quote] Hunky Nick Robinson, though boyishly handsome, is currently playing a seventeen year old who turned 18 on The Teacher, but in real life he is 25 He has sworn that this will be his LAST teen role.

At least he's eminently less repulsive than Timmeh.

The younger Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing the older, obese, disgusting Henry VIII.

Robert Redford as a college boy in The Way We Were, Babs at least looked younger than Redford though she was on the old side for a college character, too

[quote]Barbara Stanwyck in SORRY WRONG NUMBER. Her flashback scenes as a young college coed and bride were hysterical, since she was forty when she filmed this. Love her, but she looked FORTY. And in the scene when she meets Burt Lancaster at the dance. She says, “Mind if I cut in? It’s an old Spanish custom, the hag line!”. You can say that again. She didn’t even try to look younger.

Yes, this is a good one. I agree. I thought that was absurd.

A character in Female on the Beach addresses Joan Crawford as "young lady" - she was 50-ish

Timothy Granarderos (Not sure that's how it's spelled) on 13 Reasons Why. The show just ended, and he just turned 35. He was playing a high school student. He was actually old enough to be the father of the character he was playing. Ross Butler was 30.

Minka Kelly and Scott Porter on Friday Night Lights. They looked way too old to be in high school

The character of Hal in "Picnic" was 21 years old. In the movie version he was played by 37 year old William Holden, who looked even older.

The real life character in "Dog Day Afternoon" that was played by John Cazale was 18 years old. John Cazale was 39 years old and he too looked older than his actual age.

R165 "Hal Carter (William Holden) is a former college football star, adrift and unemployed after army service and a failed acting career in Hollywood."

How can he be only 21? He went to college with Alan, who has already graduated college and is in his father's grain business. Then, as I think Hal says, he joined the Army, and tried Hollywood. I always figured he was about 30.

Faye at Forty playing late teen Evita Duarte Peron

And she pulls it off

Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. When I see his gnarly old hand on Helen Hunt's back, I cringe.

And basically any romantic French movie not about teenagers.

Both the male leads in the Audrey Hepburn "Sabrina". Holden was handsome, but even he looked too old for Hepburn. And Bogart just looked like a creepy lecherous grandpa pawing his young granddaughter in his romantic scenes.

Harrison Ford was similarly creepy in the remake but Greg Kinnear at least looked young enough to make his romancing Sabrina not look ludicrous.

James Stewart paired with Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle.

Dustin Hoffman was only a few years younger than Anne Bancroft in The Graduate.

Woody Allen and Helena Bonham Carter in Mighty Aphrodite.

R156 Pffft. Keira Knightley was 19.

Any Robert Redford movie with a way too young female lead: Michelle Pfeiffer, Debra Winger, Kristin Scott Thomas.

VERTIGO: James Stewart (aged 50) and Barbara Bel Geddes (aged 36) were supposedly "going steady" together in college.

[quote]Kate Nelligan (born 1950) playing the mother of Nick Nolte (born 1941) in "The Prince Of Tides". Sure, there's a reason they call it "acting", but she's a complete fucking joke in that shitshow of a pile of garbage film. The bad wigs and makeup don't help.

The character Kate Nelligan plays is required to age around 40 years. She was 40 at the time, they made her look younger for the flashback scenes when Nick Nolte's character was 13 and much older older for the modern days scenes. Other than casting 2 different actresses I'm not sure what they could have done.

Even though there isn't much difference in their ages, Hugh Grant looks like he is in his mid-70s and Nicole Kidman looks no more than 45 in The Undoing. Hugh's horny old goat routine is especially jarring.

[quote]Even though there isn't much difference in their ages, Hugh Grant looks like he is in his mid-70s and Nicole Kidman looks no more than 45 in The Undoing. Hugh's horny old goat routine is especially jarring.

Watching the final episode now, it does stretch plausibility that someone Hugh Grant's age was able to fuck 2 different women within hours.

11 year old Kirsten Dunst was far too old to play Claudia in Interview With The Vampire. Rice's Claudia was 5.

IMITATION OF LIFE (34): Louise Beavers was 3 years old when she gave birth to Fredi Washington.

r9, what were the casting directors thinking? Something dodgy going on behind ze scenes for sure.

[quote]Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. When I see his gnarly old hand on Helen Hunt's back, I cringe.

This is a good one R168. The premise of the story basically works, but Nicholson is 26 years older than her, and he looked it at the time. Same age to slightly older (within 10 years) would have been a lot more believable.

The 1966 Lincoln Center production of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, dubbed 'Granny Get Your Gun'.

Not only was 58 year old Ethel Merman playing a 20-something Annie Oakley, her leading man, Bruce Yarnell was 30.

I haven't seen it (of course) but I gather that G is appearing in some hillbilly movie where she is playing something much too young and pretty for her actual age and appearance.

Makeup can only do so much.

Anyone who cares for her must feel sad for her. Perhaps some member of her family?

There has been a dearth of Daddy/Boy porn where there’s nary a 10-15 year age between them, and I for one am outraged about this!

[quote]R9, what were the casting directors thinking? Something dodgy going on behind ze scenes for sure.

I don't remember the details (perhaps someone else does), but, as I recall, the original intention was for Erica's surprise daughter to be a teenager. Hence the casting of Sarah Michelle Gellar. But apparently the timeline for when Gellar's character was supposedly born was absurd in terms of the show's history, and fans objected, so the character was aged. I also think the writers may have decided to develop storylines for Gellar's character that would have been inappropriate for a teenager.

r176, Kidman hasn't looked 45 since 1845

Everyone's always bagging on Kidman, but I think she looks great. Amazing skin, no pillow cheeks or absurd lip filler, enough movement in her forehead. Looks like she's gone back to her roots with the long red corkscrew hair in that tv show.

How about a 60 + Joan Collins portraying a 20 year old fleeing Nazi occupied France in Sins?!

Meryl Streep as a thirty something Julia Child trying to get pregnant in JULIE AND JULIA.

Arlene Francis as an expectant mother in The Thrill of it All

Maureen O'Sullivan as an expectant mother in "Never Too Late." She was 54. (Her late-in-life pregnancy was the catalyst for the plot.) Arlene Francis was 55 when she played an expectant mother in "The Thrill of It All."

45-year-old Sarah Bernhardt as Joan of Arc.

Ingrid Bergman was 33 years old when she portrayed Joan of Arc. Joan was 17 when she lead the army into battle and 19 when she got torched.

Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely. I liked him as an actor, but he looked so embarrassed in this to be such a decrepit specimen and supposedly hot for Charlotte Rampling.

You're stretching the point, R193. The question isn't about age-differential casting. It's about age-inappropriate casting.

Few people know of Jeanne d'Arc's relative youth. Her birth year is a guess, by the way.

As a character in semi-fictional or semi-historical works (e.g. Shakespeare's "Henry VI Part 1") her youth is stressed without a specific age. Attempting to place her as a teenager would represent a dramatic error in most such contexts because a 19-year-old woman in 14th c. France was not the same as a teen who is 19 today. It would be interesting to see someone responsibly attempt it.

Bergman played the innocence, bluster, confusion, stubbornness and conviction quite well, and matured as she went but kept a youthful feeling.

Literalists. Pffft.

I love that Pola Negri at 52 refused to be considered for the role of Norma Desmond because, at 50, the character of Norma was too old for Pola to portray it convincingly.

Ha!

Shut up r195. She was still pushing it. Most historians have said that Joan was most likely a teenager. Get off my case. Pedantic prick.

". I always figured he was about 30."

Hal wasn't 30. Neither was Alan. They were young men in their early twenties. Madge, the love interest, was nineteen. They were all really YOUNG. The character of Hal was that of a vital, rebellious young man who kept moving from place to place. As played by the aging Holden he came across as an old loser drifter. William Holden was a fine actor but he was SO wrong for that role. If James Dean had lived he would have been perfect for it. Or Paul Newman. Somebody young and beautiful.

[quote]If James Dean had lived he would have been perfect for it. Or Paul Newman. Somebody young and beautiful.

Paul Newman made his Broadway debut in "Picnic," playing Alan, Hal's college friend. Newman eventually took over the role of Hal (played originally by Ralph Meeker).

R197, I agree. People may not know her EXACT age, but it's pretty clear she wasn't 35.

R198 I don't know, it was my parents' favorite movie and when they saw it they were in their 20's I guess, so it didn't bother them. I notice that people have started talking about this more recently like, the past ten years. It never used to be an issue. But people are absolutely obsessed with ages in old movies, now. Back then people didn't even know how old actors were. There was no internet and you would have to go to the almanac or encyclopedia or something.

I mean Chris Hemsworth or Bradley James, Eddie Redmayne are all 36-38, or close to that. It isn't that old. James Dean would have been horrible in that part. He was like a boy. He was 5' 8". Hal was a studly, manly, football player.

Jessie Royce Landis played Cary Grant's mother in "North by Northwest" when she was a year [italic]younger[/italic] than he was.

Facts get in the way of MY OPINIONS!!! Begone with them!

R201, fan magazines would print actors' ages. Granted, sometimes those ages were bullshit since it was easier to get away with shaving off a few years back then, but still. In 1955, William Holden had been famous for 15 years or so, people knew he was over 30, no one thought of him as a kid.

Doris Day, about 29, playing a 15-16 year old tomboyish girl in On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon.

[quote]fan magazines would print actors' ages. Granted, sometimes those ages were bullshit since it was easier to get away with shaving off a few years back then, but still. In 1955, William Holden had been famous for 15 years or so, people knew he was over 30, no one thought of him as a kid.

I don't think my parents ever had a fan magazine in the house. I don't see little wiseass bitch James Dean as Hal, no matter what. He was similar in build to Nick Adams, who played the paperboy, Boomer. Not rugged or virile.

The only description I found of Hal's age was "20's". Inge describes him in the play as "an exceedingly handsome youth". But the funny thing is, Ralph Meeker was 33 when he originated the role on the stage, Gregory Harrison was 36 in the first TV version, and Josh Brolin was 32 in another TV version. So in casting, they always go older.

One movie (from the same year) where everyone is too old is Mister Roberts. Though it's a great movie. Henry Fonda was 50 in 1955. Roberts was, at most, 30. James Cagney was 56, William Powell was 63. Ward Bond was 52. Jack Lemmon as Pulver was more or less age appropriate at 30.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned all those thirty something juvenile delinquents in the first film version of West Side Story.

"James Stewart paired with Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle."

Yeah, that movie had two beautiful women in their twenties fighting over fifty-year-old Jimmy Stewart. I like the movie, but that's harder to believe than the existence of witches in New York!

The age difference worked in "Vertigo", where the principals are bound together by desperation, guilt, and batshittery, so the age difference doesn't really matter. But in "BB&C" the women are just after the man because they think he's hot! That's... problematic.

"One movie (from the same year) where everyone is too old is Mister Roberts. Though it's a great movie. Henry Fonda was 50 in 1955. "

Actually, that's true of war movies in general. Through much of history armies have been made up of very young men, for most of the 20th century armies were made of up men and boys in their teens and twenties, with officers hardly older. Movies never cast actors in their teens or early twenties as soldiers, they always cast older, manlier men, they'll put a fortyish John Wayne to play the sort of soldier who would have been 19 in real life.

"James Dean would have been horrible in that part. He was like a boy. He was 5' 8". Hal was a studly, manly, football player."

He would have captured Hal's restless, rebellious spirit perfectly. And there have been football players who were 5'8. If he'd bulked up a little he would have been fine. And oh my God, what he would have done with that dance scene. Holden had trouble doing that scene; he was stiff and uncomfortable. The director, Josh Logan, told him "shake your ass!" To which Holden reportedly replied "if you want ass shaking get Marlon Brando", which I thought was pretty funny. Anyway, I keep imagining James Dean in that sensual dance scene; he wouldn't have had any problem shaking HIS ass.

I've got a copy of the play "Picnic." Hal is described "an exceedingly handsome, husky youth dressed in a t-shirt, dungarees and cowboy boots." He's referred to throughout the play as "the boy" or "young man." William Holden was a mature man. I guess he got the role because he was a big name movie star but he was just so wrong for that part.

The child labor laws were pushed to the limit when Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as Velma in Chicago.

43 year old Leslie Howard and 34 year old Normal Shearer playing Romeo and Juliet. They were both big stars, having them play teen lovers was so ridiculous.

Also the forty-something Leslie Howard playing Ashley Wilkes The character was, at the beginning of the movie, only 19 or 20 years old.

Vertigo is a very layered film and one of my all time favorites. But it is indeed a very flawed one for many reasons Hitch couldn't completely control. Nonetheless, in several interviews, Hitch publicly laid the blame for its initial failure on Stewart's aging appearance and they never worked together again.

Meanwhile, Novak developed an infatuation with Stewart and they allegedly had a brief affair. Some girls like daddies. So do some guys.

Jimmy Stewart at nearly 60 playing the love interest of the 30 something and spectacularly upholstered Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle. Ditto Gary Cooper in Love In The Afternoon. Both men knew they were too old for the roles. More recently, the 47 year old Sophie Okonedo playing the 19 year old French princess Margaret of Anjou, and her age was just one issue. Ann-Margret as a suspiciously well developed 15 year old in Bye Bye Birdie - she looked like she could have Bobby Rydell for breakfast and spit out the pits.

Do we know if the cast of Thirty Something were all age appropriate and remained so during the run of the show?

R214 Jodie Turn Smith will be playing Anne Boleyn. The age is correct, but there are other issues.

Ashley Wilkes was supposed to be around the same age as Melanie and Scarlett. Leslie Howard was 20 years older than Dear Livvie!

[quote]He would have captured Hal's restless, rebellious spirit perfectly. And there have been football players who were 5'8. If he'd bulked up a little he would have been fine. And oh my God, what he would have done with that dance scene. Holden had trouble doing that scene; he was stiff and uncomfortable.

Well we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm a Dean fan. But he sets off my gaydar. He was somewhat androgynous. And his personality was offbeat and weird. A loner, shambling and introverted. Besides, he played a high school boy in this first two films. He just wasn't that manly. Hal was a simple, unquestionably straight dude, who was so hot the town beauty and the schoolteacher both want him. Very naturally masculine. Which Holden was. He was also a lot better looking than James Dean.

I have no problem with Kim Novak liking James Stewart. I'm sure there are a lot of 20s women who would go out with Di Caprio, Brad Pitt, Clooney, or Rob Lowe.

"Ashley Wilkes was supposed to be around the same age as Melanie and Scarlett."

No, he was more the Tarleton twins' age, which was 19. At the beginning of the novel Gone With The Wind, the twins are 19 and Ashley is that age or maybe a year old. Scarlett is 16. Melanie is 17. Ashley was slightly older than they were.

R219 - Please. Stewart didn't look like those men. He looked like an old man with old man hands, scraggly neck, and quavering voice. The studio had to do extensive work and filtering to get him to look even remotely feasible as the object of longing of the voluptuous young witch downstairs.

Geez, I said "around the same age" not "exactly the same age"

"Which Holden was. He was also a lot better looking than James Dean."

Uh, NO. Dean was gorgeous. Hal was greatly sought after by women and James Dean certainly would have fit the bill. He was super sexy. Onscreen you couldn't take your eyes off him. And he was A GOOD ACTOR. He definitely had the talent to be a superb Hal. And I never sensed any lack of "masculinity" on Dean's part. He projected sensitivity in his roles but that doesn't equal being limp wristed.

Holden was attractive in his youth but by "Picnic" he was definitely showing his age. He looked like an old man next to Kim Novak.

[quote][R219] - Please. Stewart didn't look like those men. He looked like an old man with old man hands, scraggly neck, and quavering voice. The studio had to do extensive work and filtering to get him to look even remotely feasible as the object of longing of the voluptuous young witch downstairs.

The men I mentioned just look good to you because they aged before your eyes, gradually. In 30 years people will look at One Upon A Time In Hollywood and say, how could that young chick be flirting with that grizzled old guy (Brad)? Jimmy Stewart was the top box office star of the time and he was coming to the end of his romantic leading man period. But it was actually Kim Novak who was a bit young for her part.

Jimmy was funny in the role, who should have played it? Tab Hunter? Robert Wagner? It was supposed to be a sophisticated older man, a publisher. Not a 25 year old.

R178 Yeah, try finding a 5 year old who can act as well as she did.

Regarding "Picnic"... Yes, Holden looked too old. If the character was in his twenties, drifting around not knowing what to do with himself after leaving college, well, sometimes young men drift for a while, and one way they straighten out and start to build lives for themselves is when they fall in love. So there's a sympathy for Hal there, but only as long as he's *young*. Because if a man is apparently forty-five and STILL doesn't know what to do with himself after leaving college decades ago, he's just a fucking loser.

As for casting James Dean or Paul Newman? No. The character had to be extremely masculine, the embodiment of masculinity, charging into a feminized environment where women ruled and the few men didn't want to marry their hags, setting everyone's genitalia aflutter. James Dean was far too sensitive and androgynous, and Paul Newman was never able to butch it up to the level the part requires. The role required the dangerous masculinity of a Burt Lancaster, although of course Lancaster was also too old, I would have cast Marlon Brando.

Brando would have been over 30, too

Brando would have been 31 when the film was released, with the help of a decent cinematographer he could have passed for mid-twenties. But the real problem with casting Brando is that he wouldn't have wanted to take the role, everyone would have seen it as a retread of his triumph as Stanley Kowalski, and he'd have been right. The two roles have a strong basic similarity, they are both the fantasies of old-queen writers, about masculinity causing havoc among the feminine.

I really don't have a backup suggestion for the role, except to say that Tab Hunter would have been a better fit. He was young, and even if he couldn't act, he was handsome and kind of butch, not that that'd have been enough.

Tab Hunter could play Madge

^ Someone should do a gay version! I'd watch it.

...hot, cute guy though

Nice review of the re-release (incorrectly stating Arthur O'Connell got an Oscar)

Wow, Holden looks at least 45 in that pic at R231. He was a very old Hal, Hal as an old loser drifter.

Holden's being too old for the part really stuck out in his scenes with Cliff Robertson, who's supposed to be the same age but looks years younger than Holden.

In the novel [italic]Les Liaisons dangereuses[/italic] the marquise and the vicomte are in their 20s; in the 1988 film Glenn Close and John Malkovich are pushing 40 and look it.

M. trying to playing a teenager in the opening scenes of House of the Spirits.

What a laugh - she has never been so funny. I had to carry that dog of a film and was the only person to receive any acclaim.

You dementia-ridden bitches are slipping: 200+ replies and not a single mention of Steve McQueen playing a teenager in The Blob?! He didn't look a day over 46 in that film.

The two leads in HOLDING THE MAN. Loved their performances, but when I first saw it, I saw that they attended Xavier University (?) so they were believable. But when I realized that it was a high school, I understood why some people thought that they were not believable as teenagers. I still love the movie, however.

R224 - Your post is absurd. Tab Hunter?

How about Gregory Peck? Rex Harrison? Robert Ryan, whose dour aspect but at least allied with some semblance of virile appeal would have been perfect?

Rex Harrison and his wife, Lili Palmer, played the roles onstage in London in 1954-1955. Harrison also directed it. Can you imagine the difference?!

Stewart himself was appalled when he saw the rushes, and more or less said it would be his last "romantic" role. Oh, that drawling, quavering voice! The studio dyed his hair, experimented with different filters to make him look less wan . . .

It barely worked. Stewart was a pro and did what he had to do, but it was absurd casting - in case you missed the title of this thread. He was 25 years older than she and it showed. If it had been Peck or Harrison or Ryan or someone like that, it would have been better.

You obviously are a fan of Stewart's. I rather like him myself - his closest heir these days was Tom Hanks. But here, he was miscast and that's all there is to it. He thought so himself. As did Cooper at the 60 year old lover of what was clearly supposed to be a virginal 18 year old Audrey Hepburn.

Both men, in these roles, realised they were past this stage of their careers and weren't happy with how they looked or came across.

Directors, of course, are perfectly happy using way older leading men with fresh ingenues so the directors, including Billy Wilder (who made the same point with the dour Bogart and the dewy Hepburn in "Sabrina" as he did with Cooper in "Love in the Afternoon") can live out their fantasy of the lovely ingenue who sees past their jowls, veiny hands, and receding hairlines to fall passionately in love with them.

I say it's dated and I say the hell with it.

[quote]It barely worked. Stewart was a pro and did what he had to do, but it was absurd casting - in case you missed the title of this thread. He was 25 years older than she and it showed. If it had been Peck or Harrison or Ryan or someone like that, it would have been better.

I never miss a Robert Ryan romantic comedy! Oh wait, there weren't any. Because he was not a comic actor. Also, he was born in 1909. Stewart was born in 1908. Rex Harrison was also born in 1908. Gregory Peck (1916) had no comedy talent, either. The closest he came to an actual romantic comedy with no dramatic overtones was Designing Woman (1957), which was originally supposed to star James Stewart. Peck wasn't funny in it.

The biggest problem with REAR WINDOW was believing that a stone fox like Grace Kelly would pine for some skinny geek like Stewart.

R241 I sound like the Jimmy Stewart apologist or something, but I took my old boyfriend to see Rear Window in a revival theater. He never saw Jimmy Stewart before, and said several times how handsome he thought he was. In real life, Grace mostly went for much older men, including Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Ray Milland (their affair almost broke up his marriage).

Maybe she did r242, but they looked mismatched onscreen. I could not get why Stewart was a leading man in the movies.

23 year old Josh Hartnett playing a US Army Staff Sergeant in Black Hawk Down. And that film had various actors older than him playing lower ranking soldiers, like Ewan McGregor and Ewen Bremner.

Ashley Wilkes in GWTW has finished university and done his grand tour (where wealthy young men went to Europe for a couple of years to become cultured--and also fuck their brains out). I think he's supposed to be mid-20s.

That part should have been Errol Flynn's. You can understand Vivien Leigh being obsessed with young Errol. Ashley was supposed to look like a blond fairytale prince, hence Scarlett's idealization of a very conflicted, flawed man. Errol was 30 in 1939 and could have played the character from his mid-20s to his late 30s, as the role required.

Errol had too much charisma for Ashley. You'd be rooting for Scarlett to get with Ashley, not Rhett

The difference was that Peck and Ryan and Grant all remained handsome into their fifties. Stewart didn't.

As for comic acting: Shep is the "straight man" in this movie. It's Lemmon and Gingold and Elsa Lanchester and Ernie Kovacs who are there for the laughs.

Gillian and Shep are the straight romantic leads.

However, if I were looking for a dream cast for this film, I would have cast Shirley Maclaine and Robert Mitchum.

We will just have to agree to disagree. In my view, Stewart was the weak link in the casting.

And a last note: a shout out to what a wonderful job the late Janice Rule did on Merle, the bitchy ex-schoolmate of Gil's.

[quote]16 year old Sarah Michelle Gellar played Susan Lucci’s 23 year old daughter on All My Children and stole every scene out from under her, and then won an Emmy 4 years before Susan won one.

And looked like a child playing dress up, especially with her scenes with Anton.

I would have tried to cast Tyrone Power as Ashley Wilkes. He was young and lovely in those days, officially 25, and Ashley was supposed to be a looker in his mid-20s, plus Power could play a man as dreamy, quiet, and still a chick magnet. So what if he wasn't blonde!

I think he would have made a nice contrast to Gable, he was actually better looking as well as younger, but less masculine and more civilized. Audiences would have totally understood why Scarlett preferrred Ashley to Rhett, and we'd still be debating which one was hotter.

Sometimes an actor or actress can pull off looking playing a character much younger or older than themselves. Winona Ryder was 27 playing a 17 year old in "Girl, Interrupted) but she looked the part and of course she could always play the part of a neurotic, twitchy teenager to perfection. Too bad that even to this day she has a teenage vibe to her despite being in her forties.

[quote]As for casting James Dean or Paul Newman? No. The character had to be extremely masculine, the embodiment of masculinity, charging into a feminized environment where women ruled and the few men didn't want to marry their hags, setting everyone's genitalia aflutter. James Dean was far too sensitive and androgynous, and Paul Newman was never able to butch it up to the level the part requires. The role required the dangerous masculinity of a Burt Lancaster, although of course Lancaster was also too old, I would have cast Marlon Brando.

Ralph Meeker was only a couple of years younger than Holden when he created the role of Hal on Broadway, but he looked perfect. And it seems he was a much better dancer than Holden -- at least he could find the beat. And those hips!

Extremely rare footage of the original cast (perhaps the *only* footage).

R244 To become a staff sergeant, you need 84 months of service. If you enter the service at 17, you can absolutely become a s sergeant at 23. Most staff sergeants I knew were 24-26.

Picnic was on Broadway in 1953. Madge was played by Janice Rule (born in 1931), Millie, the younger sister, was played by Kim Stanley (born in 1925). Ralph Meeker (Hal) was born in 1920. Eileen Heckart (Rosemary Sidney) was born in 1919.

Film (1955): Kim Novak (Madge) born 1933. Susan Strasberg (Millie) born 1938. William Holden (Hal) born 1918. Rosalind Russell (Rosemary) born 1907.

Kim Stanley was playing the YOUNGER sister of Janice Rule? Maybe it worked on stage....

I don't see what the problem is!

[R255] Sorry, wrong image!

Well, as long as Bell, Book and Candle was brought up:

Shep, telling his ex-fiancee, Merle, that the woman he dumped her for (Kim Novak) on the eve of their elopement, is a WITCH.

"Oh, Shep, you just never learned to spell," Merle purrs.

R253, and Paul Newman (1925) played Alan, who was portrayed by Cliff Robertson (1923) on film.

"Daddy Long Legs" has the creepy premise of fifty-something millionaire, Fred Astaire (who looked to be in his 60s), wooing college girl, Leslie Caron, whom he first met at an orphanage and had secretly been paying for her education.

R259 Based on that screengrab he looked 70.

R260, I was being kind.

Its a terrible movie (B) AND it stars Mademoiselle Caron (A).

R259, that looks like a shot from one of those daddy/daughter purity balls. Execs thought those two would make a good couple?

Ava Gardner and Rachel Ward were both miscast in their respective versions of ON THE BEACH, based on Nevil Shute’s 1959 novel about Australia in the aftermath of a nuclear war. In the book, Moira Davidson was a wispy twenty something blonde. Ava Gardner was thirty seven and Ward was forty three. At least Ward had an Australian accent. And Fred Astaire as Julian......wayyyyyy too old. Julian was thirty in the novel, Astaire was twice that age. And Byron Brown was fifty three.

1957, not 1959.

Sandra Bullock in BIRD BOX - her pregnancy is about as plausible as Lucy's in YOURS, MINE AND OURS.

27 year old Julie Harris playing 12 year old Frankie in THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING (1952).

R264 On the Beach was a good movie despite the bad casting. I liked the book and thought the movie covered it well.

Joan Crawford in anything she made from the mid-50s onward.

[R269] I don't see any problem!

Sasha Baron Cohen in the Chicago 7 movie triggered me. 20 years too old

Julie Harris played 12 year old Frankie Adams in the Broadway stage production of "The Member of the Wedding." The character was a very tomboyish, unfeminine 12 year old girl, tall for her age (she smokes cigarettes to stunt her growth), with a short mannish haircut. I guess she could have pulled that off on a Broadway stage, but it didn't really work on film. In the movie version she looks like what she is, a grown woman, a grown woman behaving like a disturbed 12 year old. It was kind of hard to watch.

272 That's funny, I saw this on the big screen and I loved it, my date did, and most of the people in the audience seemed to. I thought of this film when I came across the thread, but then I thought, it wasn't really age inappropriate, it actually worked. But I guess for some people, it didn't.

Billy Wilder originally wanted Cary Grant for the Bogart role in Sabrina. He went with Bogart when Grant couldn't make up his mind about the part. A shame, since Cary Grant, even at 50, was a stone hottie. It would have made sense that Hepburn fell for him, even if he was old enough to be her father.

It's funny reading this thread how people think a person (especially a woman) can't fall in love with someone unless he's gorgeous.

Missed opportunities: Cary Grant playing Maxim de Winter in Sabrina. Sadly, his partnership with Hitchcock didn't begin until a year after Rebecca premiered (he starred in Suspicion).

A twentysomething woman falling in love with a fiftysomething man is unusual. Money, daddy issues, AND looks are all usually involved.

*Maxim de Winter in REBECCA.

27 year old Natalie Wood playing a 15 year old in Inside Daisy Clover.

Joan Fontaine playing a young teen in The Constant Nymph. She overdid it a little but it worked overall. I think she was only in her mid 20s.

I've just watched an early episode of Cheers, "Coach Returns to Action", where Coach (Mr Colasanto was nearly 60) has a crush on his new neighbour, Nina (played by a woman in her early 30s), inexplicably Diane encourages him to ask her out, Coach's crush was believable but not Diane egging him on, such a strange choice, forget father, Coach is like a grandfather, loveable, just not in that way.

I think the show runners of Cheers et al had the Nina character put on a slightly cartoony voice, I've noticed they did that whenever a character wouldn't believably be paired with another, like a goofy voice redresses the balance.

R281 I'm always baffled by what's so wrong with any people who are over the age of consent going out or sleeping with each other, or whatever. Is it the way now to treat women in their early 30s as if they were virgins or young teens, or something? These aren't children, so who really cares? I don't get it when I hear people saying eww when someone in their fucking THIRTIES wants to date an older person.

Joan Fontaine had a girlish figure, with small breasts and slim hips. She also had an almost elfin beauty and in THE CONSTANT NYMPH and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN she’s quite believable as a teenager.

oh shut up, r282, don't be so sensitive. I didn't go on some diatribe, I simply stated that Diane encouraging Coach to make a move on Nina wasn't believable, it was like a cruel joke on Coach - so please don't put words in my mouth.

No you shut up R284.

[quote]I simply stated that Diane encouraging Coach to make a move on Nina wasn't believable, it was like a cruel joke on Coach

You actually didn't state that. But I was talking generally, based on your post. Not directing it at you. That's why I didn't put your post number in my replay. So don't think it's all about you.

No, you, r285

[quote] Coach's crush was believable but not Diane egging him on, such a strange choice

Close enough for most, I think.

If she'd been alive in the md-1920s, Grand Duchess Anastasia would have been in her mid-20s. Ingrid Bergman was 41 in her Oscar-winning performance of the character.

Most people have more in common with people who are within 10 years of their own age--looks, income, cultural touchstones, sex drives--the basic traits all line up. Falling in love with someone of your own generation just makes sense. Consenting adults can do what they want, but when the age difference is more than that, people start to wonder if there isn't gold-digging and/or a mid-life crisis involved.

R288 I'll let you know when I begin to care about people starting to wonder. Gay people should have moved beyond worrying about societal norms and what people are going to say? Some of the posts on DL really surprise me with their judgmental ideas about sex.

I love how judgmental you are about our judgementalness.

I said they surprise me, not judging y'all

[quote] 11 year old Kirsten Dunst was far too old to play Claudia in Interview With The Vampire. Rice's Claudia was 5.

R178 true. That ageing-up makes sense from a cinematic storytelling perspective, however - it was near-impossible, as well as borderline-inappropriate, to have a child of eleven saying Claudia's dialogue and acting her role (involving blood-drinking and flirting with grown men), let alone a preschooler. It is easier and more acceptable to present loss of innocence and relative moral depravity on the page than on screen.

If we are following literary purism, then Antonio Banderas was even more inappropriately cast in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, in terms of both age and origin. In the book his character, Armand, is a Varangian adolescent redhead (described as looking like a curly-headed Cupid from Botticelli), who has a gift for sacral iconographic painting and is destined for a life of a monk. He is turned-vamp when he is mortally injured as a disaffected 17-year old artist living as a kept boy in 1948 Venice, a place to which he fled to escape Tartar slavery. None of this backstory is alluded to in the movie, though in the book Armand suffers amnesia so perhaps this is an accurate omission.

In the film, however, Armand is clearly a middle-aged Spanish man, who more resembles an alluring fallen angel or Satanic priest than a cherub, meaning he was turned later in life and probably later in time than his book counterpart. In fact, the film makes reference to this change, when in a conversation with Louis, Armand claims that he is around 400 years old; in the book, Armand is a century older.

^^that should say ‘1498 Venice’.

Post-war vampires would have been an interesting watch, though.

Shirley Temple was scandalously young when she was cast as Mae West.

Can we talk about age inappropriateness for a song, such as Anna Kendrick in Camp singing The Ladies Who Lunch?

I love Ingrid Bergman and like Anastasia and it was a good comeback movie for her, but she was around 40 playing Anastasia when she would have been in her early to mid-twenties. I suppose at the time Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron would have been right, not that they would have been right for the part.

meant to type I suppose at the time Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron would have been right AGE-WISE, not that they would have been right for the part. Caron especially probably would not have had developed the dramatic chops at that point in her career.

Regarding the strange choice of Diane egging Coach on for his much younger crush -- Diane did not exactly make smart relationship decisions and was dating a married, older professor when the show started.

I love Ingrid Bergman and like Anastasia and it was a good comeback movie for her, but she was around 40 playing Anastasia when she would have been in her early to mid-twenties. I suppose at the time Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron would have been R296 I think the only other actress seriously considered for it was Jennifer Jones. She was around the same age as Bergman. Viveca Lindfors played it on Broadway, she was also in the same age range.

Oh, those Baby Burlesks, r294.....

R176, few 45 year olds have had that much plastic surgery.

Kidman looks like she is in her early to mid 60s in the show. That would be the youngest age at which the character would credibly have had that much work done.

Had she opted for more realistic looking proceedures,she might look 45.

Vivian Leigh in Streetcar owns this thread.

No way she passed for 30. Not even 35.

R302 She was only 38

Seriously? R303? She looked a lot older than that!

R304 She was born in 1913, the movie came out in 1951.

She had tuberculosis, and she was bipolar, before there was medication. I'm sure that could age a girl.

Filming Elephant Walk (1954), in which Elizabeth Taylor replaced her - w/Peter Finch:

E. T. in the same costume:

Ralph Bellamy in The Winds Of War was old to play FDR, who died in his early 60s. I think Bellamy was 79. Rod Taylor playing Churchill during WWII in Inglorious Basterds was 78 or 79, Churchill during the war was a bit younger, in his late 60s, early 70s. I guess that was ok and he was good.

No, we can't, r295. She was playing a kid at a drama camp. You can't expect them all to sing songs from Annie, can you?

46 year old Amy Sedaris played a high school freshman at Flatpoint High in Strangers with Candy.

There are a few long shots in Elephant Walk, esp. the scene where Finch shows Taylor around the plantation, that weren't retaken when Taylor took over the part. The difference between the women's height and waists is obvious if you're looking for it.

Leigh and Finch were having an affair at the time. That was fine with Finch's friend Olivier as it gave him an occasional respite from the high drama of dealing with Leigh.

Yes, Leigh was such a handful that when she took up with John Merivale as a serious partner, Olivier was sad but relieved to let her go. Merivale stayed with her until her death from TB (which always amazed me, that any woman of wealth living in a first-world country died of TB in 1967)>

"Vivian Leigh in Streetcar owns this thread."

I thought she looked very right for the role. Blanche is quite shopworn by the time she comes to New Orleans. She never goes out with Mitch unless it's some place that "not lighted much." She lies about her age, saying she's "slightly" younger than Stella. She laments about how her youth has "gone up the spout." It was very right that she looked middle-aged.

In the play Blanche is said to be thirty. I suppose Tennessee Williams thought for a woman age 30 was over the hill, but it's still a ridiculously young age. But throughout the play it makes it seem like Blanche is much older than that, which is why practically every actress who has played her has looked much older than that age. An actress who actually did look only thirty would probably sound pretty silly uttering some of the lines of the play.

I'm watching White Christmas right now. Rosemary Clooney is playing Vera Ellen's OLDER sister even though she was 7 years younger. Dean Jagger addresses Bing Crosby as "son" even though they were the same age

[quote]There are a few long shots in Elephant Walk, esp. the scene where Finch shows Taylor around the plantation, that weren't retaken when Taylor took over the part. The difference between the women's height and waists is obvious if you're looking for it.

Yes there are actually a lot of long shots of Vivien. The airport, the plantation, the temple ruins, etc. The reason Taylor was cast was the resemblance, so they could use the long shots that were made in Ceylon. They took background footage, to use later in the studio, which was fortunate, because Elizabeth Taylor never set foot in Ceylon. I like the movie but it probably would have been better with Vivian, and it would have had more on-location scenes, which would have helped with the atmosphere.

I don't think it helped her to be back where she grew up, and when she went to Hollywood, Stewart Granger wrote about him and David Niven trying to help Vivien on a weekend when she was acting very crazy - I think Niven wrote something about it, too.

[quote]I'm watching White Christmas right now. Rosemary Clooney is playing Vera Ellen's OLDER sister even though she was 7 years younger. Dean Jagger addresses Bing Crosby as "son" even though they were the same age.

But somehow Rosemary Clooney seemed like the older sister, and they tried to age Dean Jagger with a white toupee. I notice the more they restore these films the older some actors look. I think we used to think Bing looked younger when he was on an older TV with a somewhat less sharp image. Although VistaVision was a sharp image anyway.

Vivien on location in Ceylon

"Vivian Leigh in Streetcar owns this thread. No way she passed for 30. Not even 35."

She could pass for an exhausted alcoholic in her early 30s, which is what she was playing.

Blanche is someone whose been a round the block a couple times and probably had made a stop or two to "the bin" as Williams called it. Leigh seemed really well cast. She and Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" are probably the best cinematic "Borderline personality disorders" ever, and they did it w/o the general public knwing what a borderline was.

R317 Glenn Close, yeah, Vivien Leigh, I don't see it. How?

Neither Kazan nor most of the cast (who had created their roles on Broadway) wanted Leigh in the film. But she had been the original Blanche in London (directed by Olivier, who never understood Williams) and, most importantly, she would be big BO. The only other actress the studio seriously considered was Olivia de Havilland, who passed on the role before it was even formally offered because she found the material distasteful.

Kazan and Leigh fought a lot over her performance in the beginning because what he wanted was very different from what she had done for Olivier in London and she was reluctant to change. Eventually they were both very happy with what they achieved.

Thank god it wasn't Olivia de Havilland. Vivien was brilliant.

Agreed r320. Olivia would have ruined it.

I'll respectfully disagree with r319 and r320. Olivia was a fine and strong actress who was willing to stretch her limits and take chances with a good script and director. She wouldn't have ruined the film. But I'll easily admit I'm glad she wasn't interested and Vivien got the part.

^ Sorry, I meant r320 and r321 above, not r319 and 320, But I;ll stand by my assessment that de Havilland might have been an interesting but not ideal Blanche and I'm glad she had the sense to know it wasn't really quite right for her.

On Hulu’s new Hardy Boys series, Frank looks old enough to be Joe’s father.

[quote]Shirley Temple was scandalously young when she was cast as Mae West.

Was Shirley Temple ever considered for Madame Rose in "Gypsy"? I think she could have brought a lot of subtext to the book scenes. As a child she was the quintessential Baby/Dainty June, not to mention the most successful. However her subsequent film career as an adult had to have been a disappointing letdown. She could have tapped into that to add dramatic heft to lines like "If I coulda been I woulda been and that's show business."

de Havilland got an Oscar nom for playing psychotic in "Snake Pit", but that was basically a straightforward "disease of the week" film that any number of actresses could have played well. Streetcar is a memory play and filled with subtext and impressionism. It required actual madness, not a sympathetic portrayal of madness that gets wrapped up in the end. Leigh knew real madness---whether Olivier "got" Williams is almost irrelevant.

Temple's adult performances were wooden and lacked depth. Her experience as a child star wasn't as bad as many of her counterparts. Anyway you look at it, there wasn't much there.

Simone Signoret played "Madame Rosa" at age 56.

Sophia Loren plays the same character at age 85.

Signoret is closer in age to the character in Romain Gary's novel, set in 1975.

Kirsten Dunst didn’t play a 14 year old Marie Antoinette the entire film, R32. She was in her 20s for most of it.

Same with Florence Pugh in Little Women, R115. She was a child in the early section of the film but clearly an adult by the end.

[quote] Meanwhile, Novak developed an infatuation with Stewart and they allegedly had a brief affair.

R213 Not according to Novak...

[quote]Peter Bogdanovich had written that Stewart had an affair with Kim Novak while they were making “Bell, Book and Candle” and “Vertigo.” Eliot checked it out with Novak. “She said she had been in love with Richard Quine, the director of ‘Bell, Book and Candle,”’ Eliot remarked. “She added that Jimmy was married, and there was no way that she would have an affair with a married man.”

[quote] Same with Florence Pugh in Little Women, [R115]. She was a child in the early section of the film but clearly an adult by the end.

It’s a stretch at the beginning but I think it was better for the role and the movie to have the same actress playing Amy all the way through. The Winona Ryder version has different actresses playing young Amy and older Amy and it doesn’t work as well.

Bravo, r325.

Most of the Glee cast

The 25 year age difference between Hepburn and O'Toole in THE LION IN WINTER has always bugged me. One of them was not age appropriate for his or her role.

R334, The Lion in Winter is set in 1183, when Eleanor of Aquitaine was 61 and Henry II was 50. The movie came out in 1968, when Hepburn was 61 and O'Toole was 36, making O'Toole the one who was age inappropriate. But this doesn't bother me because O'Toole is done up to look older than his years.

Thanks for the info, R 335. I shall quit my bitchin' now.

In the movie O'Toole had some dialogue about being fifty years old, which made him the oldest man he knew.

In real life Eleanor was ten years older than Henry, so if he was playing fifty and she was playing sixty... well, they put it over. He really was too young for the role, but I'll forgive him because who can't love a top actor who really wanted to play Henry II for the second time?i Henry II was such an interesting monarch, and he's been sadly neglected by popular culture.

O'Toole looked prematurely aged by that point, anyway---too much drinking and carousing.

It’t been too long since I’ve seen ALIW, but was the Queen the lion and not the King? Maybe I didn’t understand it at the time?

Kim Stanley as Millie was much more ridiculous than Holden as Hal.

R339, Henry II was the lion. Not only is the barbary lion the symbol of England, but lions adorn the Arms of Planteganet (Royal Arms of England). And in the play/movie, Henry is 50 years old. In six years he would be dead, so he really was a lion in his winter years.

Sidebar, the 00s remake of THE LION IN WINTER is well worth a watch.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is really great and really gay in it, as Philippe Auguste. I don't think his age was that far off the mark, though.

This has happened frequently on daytime soaps. Mostly it's actors cast in parent/child roles where the difference in ages are only a few years. Dozens if not hundreds of examples.

But especially for the NYC shows, they were cast like plays (and often with theater people) and in that sort of theater mindset, you can be a bit flexible in that casting approach - as long as the actors looked right together, or looked like family, it was OK.

I think the two most severe cases was the original actor who played Ridge on B&B was only 2 or 3 years younger than the man who played his father, Eric. And then on General Hospital, when actor Jed Allen took over the role of patriarch Edward Quartermaine, the actor playing his son, Stuart Damon, was actually older than him by a year or so.

A few recasts were clearly waaaaaayyyyy too old for the role they were stepping into, and for the most part were quickly fired.

Glenn Close as Nellie Forbush.

Ali McGraw and Jan Michael Vincent in The Winds Of War. He was 39 years old playing 23.. She was a 45 playing a 30 year old.

Even Jane Seymour, at 37, was on paper, too old, but she could get away with playing younger. Plus, I believe that she's a better actress than Ali. Ali is a terrible actress.

I thought the age similarity as opposed to distance in Glenn's South Pacific worked well and didn't hurt the film (although I disliked it intensely for other reasons, including the bad musical arrangements and cuts).

Making Nellie older gave a poignancy to Nellie's wanting a partner. Seemingly inspired by Arthur Laurence's The Time of the Cuckoo, starring Shirley Booth on Broadway and Katherine Hepburn on film (Summertime).

Has anyone examined the Sound of Music film children to make sure there is adequate time between them to actually be siblings, even allowing for Irish twins?

Rachel McAdams was 28 (26 if you ask her) when she played a high schooler in Mean Girls, and she’s only a handful of years younger than Amy Poehler, who played her mother.

R349 But Amy’s an old hag so that’s not a problem.

Actors are always playing characters much younger or older than themselves. Sometimes they can pull it off. Sometimes they can't.

351 Well it's a thread called Age Inappropriate Casting

Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Anna Camp and she does look preternaturally youthful, but girl was 30 playing a college student in the first Pitch Perfect!

Mean Girls was a comedy/satire of those formative years in high school, there's nothing wrong with having the parts played by adult actresses and actors, I'd have a tough time watching it if the parts were played by high school age actors.

*Tina Fey's comedy/satire, that is

Sandy as a pregnant woman in ‘Bird Box’. Let the old girl rest.

R349 Because she's not a regular mom, she's a cool mom.

In Broken Arrow, 40-something Jimmy Stewart falls for a 16-year-old Debra Paget

In Susan Slept Here, Dick Powell is playing a 35-year-old screenwriter who falls for teen runaway Debbie Reynolds. He was 50 and looked it, giving a creepy vibe to the movie

the whole movie sounds creepy

I saw a community theater production of White Christmas a few years ago. The ensemble had several teen males, and several older, mature looking women. During one scene where the ensemble is dancing as couples, just seeing these awkward teenage boys being waltzed around the stage by women in their 50s was just odd. Like, nearly all the couples were Harold/Maude matchups.

Fred Astaire and any of his leading ladies after 1940 or so

Girl, Interrupted. Winona HS senior in ‘89 (Heathers) AND ‘99? Ugh.

R62 Hollywood in that era made matches like that all the time: the pretty, young woman with the middle-aged guy. How about Grace Kelly being madly in love with old, ailing Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window? This probably seemed reasonable to the middle-aged men running Hollywood, a world according to their own fantasies. Unfortunately, it makes most of those movies distasteful and unwatchable now so it was a bad decision on their part. Much less common today. At least some things have changed for the better in the film industry.

Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennett looked a bit long in the tooth to be an ingenue in 1940's Pride & Prejudice. She was actually 36 and a few years older than Olivier who was 33.

William Holden strutting around like some crummy Apollo in Picnic.

Greer Garson shaved four or five years off of her birthdate when she signed up with MGM. Her real age wasn’t discovered until her death. Same with Jean Arthur.

Garson was another actress from the Golden Age that I couldn’t stand. Those nostrils and her high handed manner people mistook for acting. Like she had suppositories inserted into her anus before she did her scenes.

Irene Dunne and Joan Crawford were two more classic movie actresses who shaved years of their real age

Another vote for Greer's Bennett to Olivier's Darcy.

As long as Logan Lerman keeps dying his hair to cover the grey, he'll be cast as 18 year olds until he's 50.

Wilford 'Diabeetus' Brimley was only 50 when he played the nursing home resident in "Cocoon."

I think Wilford popped out of the womb looking 70

Good god, there are too many to even list.

For that matter, the "youth gang" members in "West Side Story" weren't exactly teens, either.

Chakiris: 27

Tamblyn: 27

Moreno: 30

Wood and Beymer were each a few years younger, mid-twenties.

Although hardly so far on they looked middle-ages. absolutely none of them looked like the mid- to late teens they were portraying, even Wood and Beymer.

Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford playing college students in The Way We Were

Oh Lordy that was a classic R374. Redford's face looked like a catchers mitt. A handsome catchers mitt but a catchers mitt still the same.

R374 -- I see your "Redford playing a college student in The Way We Were" and raise you "Redford playing a 19-year-old baseball rookie in The Natural".

There's not enough soft-lighting in the world, Bob.

What about Streisand, though? She used that young, girly voice as college student Katy that sounded ridiculous coming out of her old face.

The Way We Were was a syrupy spectacle that strained believability to the point of absurdity.

Age inappropriate casting can sometimes seem ridiculous but it actually broadens the appeal of the movie or TV show. Younger people identify with the period of life and setting while older people see themselves in the characters more easily.

Most high school set movies are like this. A lot of the actors are in their mid 20's or early 30's. I've grown so used to this that when I see an actual high school kid, I have to do a double take. They look like babies compared to the ones on the big screen. It also gave me an unrealistic expectation of how I was supposed to look as a teenager.

Scarlet Johansson was way too young for Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

R129 wins. Madonna at 38 playing Evita who died at 33 can't compare to a nearly 40 year old Diana Ross playing Dorothy Gale.

Millie Perkins in "The Diary of Anne Frank." During her time in hiding Anne Frank went from 13 to 15 years old. Perkins was 20 or 21 when she played her. In the film Perkins speaks in a wee, little girl voice and the script had her behaving like a silly little girl. but it's quite obvious she's a fully developed young woman. A young woman acting like a little girl...the Anne Frank in this movie seemed like a retard.

Audrey Hepburn was a serious contender for the role of Anne Frank in this movie. She was even older than Perkins; when the film was released in 1959 she would have been 29 or 30 years old.

Hepburn would have been perfect as Anne Frank.

"Ashley Wilkes in GWTW has finished university and done his grand tour (where wealthy young men went to Europe for a couple of years to become cultured--and also fuck their brains out). I think he's supposed to be mid-20s."

Let's say he graduated high school at age 17. He went to Europe for a "Grand Tour" but it's not specified how long that was. It was never said that he was a college graduate. I think after high school (or the equivalent of it in those days) he kicked around Europe a bit and then intended to study something in college. But Ashley was a dreamer not a doer; he may never have completed college at all. At any rate, I think he was maybe nineteen or twenty at the beginning of GWTW. I think he around the same age as the Tarleton twins, who were nineteen. The Tarleton twins never went on a Grand Tour (Europe? Who wants to go there?) and were kicked out of several colleges.

Miss Ava Gardner in Earthquake. She was way too old to play Lorne Greene’s daughter.

Ralph Macchio, cast younger than he was in almost every project he ever did.

Off the top of my head, the most egregious and well-known examples were THE OUTSIDERS, in which Macchio was 21 playing a young teen, and THE KARATE KID movies where he was solidly into his 20s (27 by the final film) playing a highschool student. In CROSSROADS and DISTANT THUNDER he was in his mid-late 20s and still playing teenagers. Though iirc, he was around the same age as his character on EIGHT IS ENOUGH.

Macchio only got his first role playing an adult when he was 28 years old, in TOO MUCH SUN (with Robert Downey Jr.). Following that, he only booked five or six movies and a couple of tv series in his early-mid 30s, before essentially going into semi-retirement to raise his two kids.

31 year old Tanya Roberts as a top model in Charlie's Angels.

Ava Gardner played Lorne Green's daughter in "Earthquake." Pulleeze!!!

I just watched the 1968 Burton/Taylor flop "Boom!" based on Tennessee Williams' flop play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore". It concerns a dying millionairess Flora "Sissy" Goforth who flails about screeching, ranting and raving on her private island denying that she is one foot in the grave. Burton plays Christopher Flanders, a hunky young failed poet who has a penchant for latching on to rich, elderly dying women. It has given him the nickname "The Angel of Death". The stage productions featured Hermione Baddeley and Tallulah Bankhead as Flora (with Tab Hunter as Chris).

Well, Liz is in her mid-thirties and still one of the most beautiful women alive (although the body is starting to get soft and the double chin is occasionally visible). Liz shrieks her way through the part in one petulant key coming off like a spoiled bimbo not a monstrous grande dame facing mortality. Unlike "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", no attempt is made to give her gray streaks in the hair or wrinkles - she looks like a thirty something woman. Very little vulnerability or ruined grandeur. Meanwhile, Burton as the young stud poet/gigolo is in his mid-40's and a tired paunchy alcoholic who looks older than Mrs. Goforth. Beautiful voice and those blue eyes but Burton looks tired and dissipated. Taylor though she is supposed to be dying is full of youth and vitality. So you don't get the cougar/boy toy thing that Williams was aiming for. Both are so miscast and the balance is really off.

It needed a pairing like Joan Crawford and Alain Delon to make it work.

They should have flipped the genders and had Liz as the Angel of Death.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

In most versions of "The Glass Menagerie" I've seen Tom, Laura and the Gentleman Caller are all much older than the character's actual ages. Tom is 21; Laura and the gentleman caller are 23. But the actors who play them are almost all much older. I've seen gentleman callers who look at least 40. There's a version where Sam Waterston and Joanna Miles played Tom and Laura. They both look like they're at least in their mid-thirties. Has there EVER been a version where age appropriate actors played them?

Norma Desmond is 50 and joe is early 20s.

In what world have we ever seen that

[quote]Off the top of my head, the most egregious and well-known examples were THE OUTSIDERS, in which Macchio was 21 playing a young teen, and THE KARATE KID movies where he was solidly into his 20s (27 by the final film) playing a high school student.

Is it really "age inappropriate casting" though, when an actor looks the age of the character and gives a convincing performance? He played a 16 year old, not really a young teen, in The Outsiders, and he looked more like a 16 year old than many of the actors today who play 16 years old high school students on TV. He was pretty perfect as Johnny. He was also convincing in The Karate Kid, and it was a massive hit, so who objected? Maybe in the last movie he was too old, I didn't see it. Patrick Swayze was 30, I think, playing the older brother in The Outsiders who was supposed to be about 19.

I think one of the oldest actors playing a teen on TV recently was Timothy Granaderos, on 13 Reasons Why, wo played Monty. He was 34 on the final season. Though truthfully he looked 23 at most.

[quote]Norma Desmond is 50 and joe is early 20s. In what world have we ever seen that

You being sarcastic? Because: young, broke man, who falls into a relationship, and is being kept, by an older, rich woman, and he has a young girlfriend on the side...nah that NEVER happens.

R396 It does in the MOVIE version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Andrea from 90210.

Tom Holland, who by recent pictures seems to have finally hit puberty, was already 21 when he filmed the first of the Chaos Walking films in 2017 where he’s supposed to be playing a 13 year old. The film has continually been delayed and is only coming out in March. That doesn’t bode well for the two remaining books being adapted, especially if he looks like an adult now. Daisy Ridley who was 25 at filming, plays a character in the film who is usually referred to as girl.

R399 Stupid. He can’t play 13.

[quote] Scarlet Johansson was way too young for Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

To be fair, they both recognize this and nothing sexual happens between them.

[quote] Tom Holland, who by recent pictures seems to have finally hit puberty, was already 21 when he filmed the first of the Chaos Walking films in 2017 where he’s supposed to be playing a 13 year old. The film has continually been delayed and is only coming out in March. That doesn’t bode well for the two remaining books being adapted, especially if he looks like an adult now

They’ve obviously aged up the characters (as they did in Game of Thrones for example).

I doubt there is much danger of the other books being adapted, given that the movie has sat unreleased for years.

R402 The problem is that the character is on the verge of puberty and it’s central to the story. He also lives in an all male society and has two dads in the book.

[quote] Off the top of my head, the most egregious and well-known examples were THE OUTSIDERS, in which Macchio was 21 playing a young teen, and THE KARATE KID movies where he was solidly into his 20s (27 by the final film) playing a high school student.

Well Ralph is an unusual case — he had some kind of growth disorder that kept him looking like a boy until he was in his 30s. It’s disconcerting to watch the third KK movie knowing he was married by then, as he scarcely looks any older than he did in the first one.

[quote]Off the top of my head, the most egregious and well-known examples were THE OUTSIDERS, in which Macchio was 21 playing a young teen, and THE KARATE KID movies where he was solidly into his 20s (27 by the final film) playing a high school student.

In The Outsiders, Ponyboy is 14 and Johnny (Ralph) is 16. Though Johnny was supposed to look younger than his age. But I don't think it's all that unusual for 21 year olds to be cast as 16 year olds. Currently on the Freeform series two of the lead teen roles are played by 23 year olds, and their age range on the series (which takes place over 3 years) seems to be from about 15 or 16, to 17 or 18.

*The Freeform series, Cruel Summer