20 famous movie actors who played characters much older or younger than their age

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sometimes, for a good role, actors simply move mountains in their pursuit of conformity. Someone is losing weight in a record, someone is gaining, someone is growing their hair, and someone is shaving baldly. But what if the path to fame requires literally proving that age is just a number? In our roundup, there are actors who stagger the age gap with their characters.

It turns out that not one or two actors played characters far from their real age. From Gwyneth Paltrow to Amanda Seyfried, some of the cases are truly amazing. Remember Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies? But the actress is there under forty! In the film, she was the oldest actress to play a teenage student at Hogwarts. Age challenges actors, they accept it and win!

# 1. Denise Richards, Wildness

The heroine was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, and the actress at that time was already twenty-seven years old.

# 2. Emma Thompson, Sense and Sensitivity

Thompson played nineteen-year-old Eleanor Dashwood in the film when she was thirty-five herself.

# 3. Paul Wesley, The Vampire Diaries

His character Stefan Salvatore was seventeen years old, and the actor was thirty-five.

# 4. Rachel McAdams, Mean Girls

Schoolgirl Regina George is seventeen in the film, and Rachel is twenty-five.

# 5. Kit Harington, Game of Thrones

Keith was thirty years old, and Jon Snow must be seventeen. In the books, he was generally fourteen.

# 6. Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries

He started playing Damon Salvatore, a twenty-five-year-old vampire, when he was thirty. The series ended only eight years later. Yang, thirty-eight, was still playing twenty-five.

# 7. Jennifer Gray, Dirty Dancing

Gray was twenty-seven years old at the time of filming. This did not prevent her from brilliantly playing the role of seventeen-year-old Baby.

# 8. Leonardo DiCaprio, "Catch Me If You Can."

Leo was twenty-eight years old, and his hero, Frank Abignale Jr., was only sixteen.

# 9. Cole Sprouse, Riverdale

The actor is now twenty-seven, but his Riverdale character should be only sixteen years old.

# 10. Michael J. Fox, Back to the Future

Marty McFly is seventeen, Fox is twenty-nine.

# 11. Sophie McShera, Downton Abbey

Sophie plays the young chef's assistant, Daisy, in Downton Abbey at the age of thirty-five.

# 12. Keanu Reeves, Bill & Ted's Great Adventure

Reeves played a seventeen-year-old schoolboy at the age of twenty-five in this 1989 sci-fi comedy.

# 13. Jack Gleeson, Game of Thrones

As is often the case in Game of Thrones, the actor is twenty-five and King Joffrey was seventeen. In the books, he was generally only thirteen years old.

# 14. Olivia Newton-John, Grease

Schoolgirl Sandy Dumbrowski is seventeen and Olivia is twenty-eight.

# 15. Amanda Seyfried, Les Miserables

Cosette was a teenager, and Amanda at the time of filming was twenty-seven, which did not stop the actress from looking very convincing.

# 16. Winona Ryder, Girl, Interrupted

Winona was twenty-eight years old when she played an eighteen-year-old girl, Suzanne Kaisen.

# 17. John Franklin, Children of the Corn

The role of the twelve-year-old Prophet in the horror film Children of the Corn was the debut for John Franklin. Only at the time of the role he was twenty-five. Impressive!

# 18. Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's

The heroine of the magnificent Audrey Hepburn in the film is eighteen, and the actress is thirty-two. Audrey's age is definitely not a hindrance!

# 19. Shirley Henderson, Harry Potter

Shirley was thirty-seven when she played "Moaning Myrtle" in the Harry Potter films.

# 20. Laurence Fishburne, Apocalypse

Fishburne was only fourteen years old when he played a soldier in Apocalypse.

# 21. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, My Horrible Nanny

Thomas turned fourteen when he played a seven-year-old in McPhee's nanny.

In fact, there are a lot of such cases when adult actors play the roles of adolescents. There is a good reason for this: after all, the child labor law prohibits working more than three to four hours a day. Filming usually takes ten to twelve hours. Then, children go to school and the educational process cannot be interrupted. Insurance is also more expensive for children. Therefore, directors always try to bypass this aspect, finding an adult actor for the role and depriving themselves of many problems in this way. Adult actors are more experienced and professional. When a film or TV series has been filmed for several years, the growing up of children is more noticeable.

For many child actors who started their film careers at a very early age, the sudden fame and intense workload proved to be an overwhelming burden. For example, Macaulay Culkin, who started acting at age 4 and became famous for his role as Kevin McCallister in the films Home Alone, has repeatedly said how hard it all is.

“It started to feel like a routine. I started talking about it, but nobody listened to me. I said, "I want to go to school - I haven't finished a full year since first grade," he said in a recent interview. Culkin's lifelong struggle with psychological problems also exemplifies that the appointment of a very young actor to host a role that requires a lot of responsibility can bring a lot of trouble.

If you are interested in cinematography and its famous creators, read our article on for which the brilliant director Stanley Kubrick hated his first film and did not let the audience see "A Clockwork Orange".