Actors Who Were Too Old For Their Roles

Every actress who played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.

31 year old Arianna Grande as 18 year old Glinda and 40 year old Cynthia Erivo as 18 year old Elphaba.

Jimmy Stewart in Flight of The Phoenix. Barbra in Yentl.

Mixed feelings about this, but Armie Hammer in 'Call Me By Your Name."

I think he [bold]looked[/bold] older than the character's age.

Nicole Kidman in everything.

Judy Garland in A Star is Born.

R1 Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh weren’t.

The twentysomething cast of GREASE, but mainly 33-year-old Stockard Channing playing a high school senior.

At that age, even the horse wouldn't have fucked Helen Mirren.

I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.

Jim Carrey in Yes Man

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara who is supposed to be 16 at the beginning of GWTW and was 26 when it was filmed. And looks older than 26.

Funny thing is that although Stockard was twice the age of her character (and looked it), she was still perfect.

Dian[bold]e/[bold] Ross in the Wiz.

Thread closed

R1 and R12 are insane.

R2 Ariana can pass for 18-19 though. Cynthia Eviro is only 36 but I get your point.

Billy Wilder films in the 50s.

Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina.

Jimmy Stewart in The Spirit of Saint Louis

Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon(or Love in the Afterlife.)

Gloria Stuart in Titanic

[quote]Mixed feelings about this, but Armie Hammer in 'Call Me By Your Name." [quote]I think he looked older than the character's age.

It didn't help that his character was smoking and playing cards with retirees at that store. Or that Chalamet had the face and build of a prepubescent boy.

30 year old Gabrielle Carteris playing a high school sophomore on Beverly Hills, 90210

35-year-old (at the time of filming, though it wasn't released for 2 years) Caroline Munro playing a high school student in Slaughter High

“Scream”

Skeet Ulrich (Billy), Jamie Kennedy (Randy) and Matthew Lillard (Stu) were playing 17-18 years old in “Scream” but they were all older than David Arquette who played young deputy Dewey Riley who was playing a 25 year old.

Mae West in “Sexette”. I don’t know how old her character was supposed to be but it definitely wasn’t 80.

Sandra Bullock in “The Lost City”. She was 58 playing a rom com with Channing Tatum who’s 16 years younger than her.

Lucy in " Yours, Mine and Ours". Although it is one of my all time favorite films Lucy having a baby when she is 57 is disgusting.

Some people can be so touchy!

Diana Scarwid was much too old to be playing most of the "older Christina" scenes that she did in Mommie Dearest.

In "Me In My Shadows" they did the switch between Tammy Blanchard and Judy Davis a scene or two too soon, unfortunately it made Judy Davis look silly doing the "Trolley" number.

Zach Efron in Neighbors.

Have you ever seen Norma Fucking Shearer and Leslie Howard in "Romeo and Juliet"?

Christ. Shakespeare's spirit wept.

Clark Gable in every film he did in the 50s.

Is this thread about literally being too old or seemingly being too old. Good casting is good casting.

Arguably Lucy in Mame.

Brenda Blethyn is almost 80 (b. 1946) and she's still playing a working police officer on "Vera."

Jonathan Frid in the 1795 storyline of Dark Shadows. That man should've been married for at least 20 years, not engaged to be married and answering to his father about who he chooses.

Don't forget me! I played the fresh as mountain dew, Maria the novitiate, when I was a mere 57! And won a Tony too!

Sorry, 47! But I could have done it at 57!

Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln.

Sally Field in Mrs. Doubtfire.

I loved Bette Midler in the most recent Hello, Dolly revival, but at 70-whatever she was a solid thirty years too old for the part of Dolly.

Leslie Howard asl Ashley Wilkes in GWTW. But he's quite good despite that.

Mrs. Alfred Steele as Joan Kane on The Secret Storm.

THREAD CLOSED.

This thread exists already

Lucy in "Mame", Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette" and "Romeo and Juliet" along with Leslie Howard, Barbra in "Yentl",

Sally Field wasn't too old in Mrs. Doubtfire, r37. It was 30 years ago and she played the mother of a teenager and two younger kids.

Actually, almost all the Roses in Gypsy. IRL, she was 21 when Louise was born and would have been 39 when Louise became Gypsy in 1929. I know Gypsy isn't a documentary but some of the Roz was 55 when they made the movie.

Every single student in Welcome Back Kotter.

[quote]Judy Garland in A Star is Born.

Judy was thirty-one when she filmed "A Star is Born", playing a big band singer who's paid her dues. Not really older than Esther should be.

Esther Rolle on Good Times.

Sheri Moon Zombie and Jeff Daniel Phillips in The Munsters (2022). It is supposed to be a prequel to the show taking place long before Eddie was born, yet Sheri was 10 years older than Yvonne De Carlo was in 1964 when the show began and Jeff Daniel Phillips was 16 years older than Fred Gwynne was.

R46, Judy aged fast, she looked like she was in her 40s in A Star as Born. She was actually too old to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz too but her performance makes you forgive her.

At this point the whole cast of Law & Order SVU would all be retired by now.

R12 She pulled it off with flying colors. The way she moves her body, her voice inflections, etc. are those of a 16 year old and they change throughout the movie until she reaches maturity. It's not surprising that her performance is considered the greatest performance by an actress on film, together with our Meryl in Sophie's Choice.

Who would’ve forced Ethan Hunt to retire?

Better to have someone too old, rather than a pint-sized harlot spreading chaos wherever she goes........

Kyle McLachlan aged 24/5 playing a 15 year in Dune.

R7 Tennessee Williams imagined Blanche to be around 30. Leigh and Tandy were pushing 40.

Trevor Donovan was 27 in 2009 when 90210 premiered. He played a high schooler.

In the musical OKLAHOMA! "Curley," "Laurey," "Judd," "Will," and "Ado Annie" are only supposed to be around 16/17.

The show takes place in one day and is about a bunch of teenage cowboys and their gals looking forward to the school dance on the eve of Oklahoma finally becoming a state in 1907.

"Laurey's" rival, "Gertie," is the oldest at 18 and "Laurey" remarks that she's gotten so old.

Anyway, for the 1955 movie, they cast Gordon MacRae (34) as "Curly," Gene Nelson (35) as "Will," Gloria Graham (32) as "Ado Annie," and "Rod Steiger" (30) as "Jud."

Shirley Jones (21) as "Laurey" actually wasn't so bad. Plus, she looked youthful.

But in a lot of professional productions, they still cast thirtysomethings in those roles, more recently the 2019 Broadway revival.

Tom Cruise owns this thread.

When is the last time Cruise has done a role that wasn’t an action film?

In 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', 55 year old John Wayne and 54 year old Jimmy Stewart are fighting over 33 year old Vera Miles.

Even worse, most of the film is a flashback to the time Stewart headed off to the frontier as a 'young' hotshot lawyer.

Diane in The Wiz.

[quote]Anyway, for the 1955 movie, they cast Gordon MacRae (34) as "Curly," Gene Nelson (35) as "Will," Gloria Graham (32) as "Ado Annie," and "Rod Steiger" (30) as "Jud."

I never miss a "Rod Steiger" musical. (And why the scare quotes?)

The many 1930s leading men who played Audrey Hepburn's love interests in 1950s and 1960s films:

Fred Astaire (Funny Face)

Gary Cooper (Love in the Afternoon)

Humphrey Bogart (Sabrina)

Cary Grant (Charade)

[quote]Trevor Donovan was 27 in 2009 when 90210 premiered. He played a high schooler.

And Ryan Eggold, who is 2 years younger, played the English lit teacher.

R62 I was taught to put a character's name in quotes to differentiate them from the actors.

I just realized I goofed by doing it to Steiger's name, too. haha

Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

She was only 2.5 years younger than La Buckley.

Nancy Loomis in Halloween. She couldn't pass as a 17-year-old and they knew it. They had her playing a divorced mother of 2 in Halloween III: Season of the Witch just 4 years later.

Joan in Torch Song

THE MIRACLE WORKER (1962) takes place in the spring of 1887, when Annie Sullivan was 20 and Helen Keller was 6.

At the time of filming, Anne Bancroft was 30 and Patty Duke was 14.

R12 is being ridiculous. Leah looked late teens and was spectacular in the role as well as gorgeous. William Holden is a wonderful actor but it was ridiculous to cast him as a college boy in Picnic when he looked like he was pushing 50.

A lot of folks here aren't getting it. It's not about actors being older than their characters, but whether or not they can pass for younger. Sissy Spacek and Vivien Leigh were both 26 but were convincing as 16-year-olds. We didn't need to suspend as much disbelief with them as we did with, say, Olivia Newton John, who looked every bit of her 30 years in Grease.

Nicole Kidman, 45 (and looking it) playing 32-year-old Princess Grace in "Grace of Monaco".

Yeah, Sissy Spacek was believable as a teen in Carrie, despite her age.

[quote] I loved Bette Midler in the most recent Hello, Dolly revival, but at 70-whatever she was a solid thirty years too old for the part of Dolly.

Is Dolly's age specified? I just thought she was a widowed matchmaker who'd given up on finding love a second time *because* of her age. If anything, 26 year old Babs playing the role in the film was ridiculously too young.

Oh, blimey, I wouldn’t like to comment on many of my co-stars, these were different times and playing the love interest of a prepubescent girl was not frowned upon at the time. Glad we have evolved and will be thrilled to play Blanche in ten ten years time or so.

William Holden in Picnic.

[bold]Joaquin Phoenix was 51 years old when he made 'Napoleon.' In contrast, the real Napoleon was around 25 or 26 when he met Josephine and was 45 at the Battle of Waterloo.[/bold] He died in St. Helana at 51.

The film did not work because the actor was not young enough. Napoleon represents the archetypal story of a young man from the provinces who went to the capital and achieved greatness.

Phoenix from 'Gladiator' or 'Walk the Line' would have been perfect.

R60 They have a lot of younger cops. But Livia and Ice T would def be retired.

I'm not sure the cast from Grease really counts. If Stockard Channing or ONJ were thrown in with a load of 16 year olds, I'd get it, but no-one in the cast were teenagers. It's a cast of adults playing teenagers.

Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin in “ Beyond the Sea.” Spacey was 43 when he was covering the career of a man who DIED at 37. Too old. He didn’t have the looks, the voice, the moves, or even a good toupee.

Nick Nolte as Tom Jordache in “Rich Man, Poor Man” as it’s hard to play a high school student in your mid-30’s.

[quote] William Holden is a wonderful actor but it was ridiculous to cast him as a college boy in Picnic when he looked like he was pushing 50.

[quote] William Holden in Picnic.

True, something Holden himself acknowledged. I think I read somewhere that he had to be talked into taking the role of Hal.

Still, Holden's talent really nailed the tragedy that is Madge's fate.

His Hal talked a good game to her that he could "make it" with her, but you knew damn good and well, he'll always be a deadbeat and will use up Madge's young, beautiful years.

R79 I think part of why it works for Grease is that they were playing a generation prior. It’s was supposed to be nostalgic for the baby boomers the age of the actors so it kinda works that they were older.

That's an interesting take, r77. I thought the film sucked because of how low-effort of a performance he gave. That flat, disinterested way of speaking made him sound like Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic. I don't think the movie would have been saved if he were 20 years younger. Ridley Scott probably wanted to kill him.

R79 there were technically two teenagers in the main roles: Kelly Ward (the young blonde T-Bird) and Dinah Manoff (Pink Lady Marty) were both about 18 or 19 at the time.

R77 That’s exactly why it didn’t work. Gen X A listers keep hogging all the prestige roles.

Huge Ackman is hilarious in The Greatest Showman. In the beginning of the movie he plays a young PT Barnum but is in fact about 400 years old.

He shows up at the house of his young girlfriend to ask her father for her hand in marriage, and he’s only 9 years younger than the actor playing the father.

Oops.

In the 1981 TV miniseries EVITA PERON, 40-year-old Faye Dunaway played her from ages 15-33.

Almost 50 year old Audrey Hepburn in Bloodline.

Ava Gardner as Lorne Greene's daughter in Earthquake.

Miss piggy should have been more of an ingenue.

Fiftysomething Nicole Kidman playing the mother of a child in elementary school in basically everything she does now.

Any fifty/sixty/seventysomething actor who's the star of an action movie, kicking the asses of guys in their twenties who are built like WWE wrestlers.

R92 In fairness she was the fifty-something mother of an elementary schooler....

Armie Hammer was supposed to be 24 but was 30 and looked 35 and Timothee Chalamet was 21 and supposed to be 17 but looked 13. It was creepy.

Karen Black in 1975s, ‘Day of the locust’ . Spoiler alert , no actual locust were harmed in the film.

Bette Davis in Dead Ringer. Her character was supposed to be 40-ish. Davis was 56 and looked 70. And the hideous wig didn't help matters.

On that note, r96, in All About Eve , as we know, she shyly admits to going on to 40. She was only 42 but looked 52. I absolutely love Bette Davis and her Margot Channing was perfection, but god, did she look older…

The booze and cigs did a number on Bette's looks. She didn't age well at all.

R91 It’s not unusual when you think of all the professional women in NYC and LA who held children later in life.

It's unusual when you're 56 and your son is 5.

You rang

My dad was 51 when I was born. It happens.

r102 that's your dad, not your mom.

Careful. I’ve been banned from Reddit after making similar gender assumptions. True story…

r83 - you are right about the performance being flat.

There's a notable line where Napoleon refers to finding the crown of France in a gutter and picking it up with his sword. In Ridley's version, Napoleon delivers this remark during his coronation. However, Napoleon would never have said something like that at that moment since he was already crowning himself and had no need for such a comment. Perhaps Phoenix chose to downplay and flatten the remark.

In the film Désirée*, Marlon Brando, playing Napoleon, delivered the same line in a private talk. He brought his sonorous voice down to a conversational level, giving it a sense of normalcy while retaining its imperiousness. Brando did an exceptional job researching Bonaparte and even gave Napoleon slightly blond hair. At that time, he was 30 years old and slim!

*Désirée was a terrible film, with an all-American girl Désirée, complete with a 50s teenage accent.

Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen.

Uh, how is British Jean Simmons an all-American girl, r105?

And thoughHolden was definitely too old in Picnic, it works for me, because Hal is an idiot, and having Holden play him makes him likable.

[quote]In the 1981 TV miniseries EVITA PERON, 40-year-old Faye Dunaway played her from ages 15-33.

It's called ACTING, you little homosexual boy!

Meryl was only 14 years younger than Shirley MacLaine, her mother in Postcards from the Edge.

Meryl also played Cher's daughter in Mamma Mia! Here We Again, despite only a 3 year age difference (granted this was supposed to be a joke).

Both of these films were a success, so who cares.

Agree about Tom Cruise - how many times do we have to see him running or doing stunts when a man his age (62) should just sit down and offer advice.

Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo

William Holden always looked much older, he was a chain-smoking drunk. He was only 31 when Sunset Boulevard was filmed but looked 45, if not older.

Jon Hamm in that horrible Fletch remake

Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.

Montgomery Clift in [italic]Lonelyhearts[/italic]. He did a good job nevertheless; but he was a nearly 40-year-old man playing a young man just getting started in adult life.

John Barrymore in [italic]Romeo & Juliet[/italic]. A 54 year-old, haggard from alcoholism, shouldn't be playing the blithe young Mercutio.

Jimmy Stewart in "Bell, Book, and Candle." His last leading man role.

Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button.

Corey Haim in "Lucas."

But I still made it work for me.

[quote]R1 Every actress who played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.

[italic]Excuse me?

[quote]R7 Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh weren’t

I believe the playwright envisioned Miss DuBois to be around 30.

Tandy and Leigh were both 38.

30 was a lot older back then than it is now

Carol Channing originated the role of Dolly in Hello Dolly at the age of 43. Babs was closer in age to Channing than Midler. Dolly is not a senior citizen.

Bobby always went on stage with his toupee crooked.

[quote]R122 Carol Channing originated the role of Dolly in Hello Dolly at the age of 43.

God, now I’m envisioning Carol Channing as Blanche DuBois.

Actually - I would kill to see that!

Stockard Channing as Betty Rizzo in Grease. She looked 30+ instead of 17... wait, she was.

While Cruise gets older, his costarring ladies seem to get younger, which makes the age difference even more noticeable. I guess he thinks it makes him look more virile.

Ben Platt as Evan Hansen. He looked way too old.

The big ol’ embryo baby in the huge display cube at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

[quote] I guess he thinks it makes him look more virile.

Fuckin' tearin' those pussies up bro!

54-year-old Glenn Close, as Nellie Forbush, in South Pacific.

The M/G shit has never been funny.

.....

R105

Emma Thompson in "Sense and Sensibility"

r107 -- didn't even realize it was Jean Simmons. I'm sorry she sounded terrible in the print I saw. I just saw her in YT and realized she sounded like Audrey Hepburn.

Why is no one else enthralled with the idea of CAROL CHANNING as Blanche DuBois??

Pearls before swine…!

R135 incidentally, what was Audrey's accent?

It didn't sound British or American to me.

It was like a Euro hybrid accent.

[quote]The M/G shit has never been funny.

I chuckled.

r137 - that's what it sounded to me. Here's the ridiculous movie. Sorry, it's one of my bugaboos.

Another is the Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Does anyone believe that those gray, invisible men, totally unmemorable who were spies in divided Berlin sounded like Richard Burton?

[quote]Why is no one else enthralled with the idea of CAROL CHANNING as Blanche DuBois??

Because we're not ANCIENT FAGS.

Meryl was pushing 60 when she did "Mamma Mia," a good twenty years too old for the plot (such as it was) to make any sense.

R77 Joaquin wasn't no damn 51 in Gladiator. He's not even 51 now

Blanche is only supposed to be 30?? It read as closer to 40 in my mind but it was also written a long time ago and 30 is like 50 today. I have only seen Leigh in the role and she was perfection.

[quote] Mae West in “Sexette”. I don’t know how old her character was supposed to be but it definitely wasn’t 80.

You are a hateful ageist misogynist and should be ashamed!

Gregory Peck as the diplomat father in The Omen. He had to be pushing 60 and had a five year old son.

What is your point R145?

Lucy in YOURS MINE AND OURS. Her character was supposed to be in her early thirties but Lucy was 57. Her pregnancy scenes are hysterical. Henry Fonda was way too old for his character too. He was 63 FFS.

She had teenagers too so more than likely in her late thirties or early forties

R142 Perhaps you reread r77’s actual post. Reading is fundamental dear.

Diane Keaton was excellent in Looking For Mr. Goodbar, but I thought the character was early 20's and she was 32ish. I had read the book, and I always envisioned Carol Kane in that part from the description in the book.

R30 Age wasn't the only problem horse face Glenn Close had in playing Forbush.

R147, while Lucy was older in real life than the character she was portraying in YMAO, I felt that her acting ability carried the day and you really believed that she was in her early 30s, so real did she make it all seem.

r152 are you joking? She looked even older than 57 and had that chain-smoker's voice. Her uterus and ovaries were dust at that point but we were supposed to believe she was pregnant.

[quote]In the musical OKLAHOMA! "Curley," "Laurey," "Judd," "Will," and "Ado Annie" are only supposed to be around 16/17.

R57 yes, the only adult characters are Aunt Eller (Laurey's guardian) and Andrew Carnes (Ado Annie's dad) who chaperone the dance.

Ali Hakim is a wandering Lothario in his twenties.

But everyone else is supposed to be high school age.

[quote]God, now I’m envisioning Carol Channing as Blanche DuBois.

Stella, please fetch me a lemon coke with shaved ice... but with no CORN!!

[quote][R152] are you joking? She looked even older than 57 and had that chain-smoker's voice. Her uterus and ovaries were dust at that point but we were supposed to believe she was pregnant.

I don't see the problem

Diane Keaton in [italic]the Little Drummer Girl[/italic] - I've complained about this before, just thought I'd mention it in this thread.