Macaulay Culkin (20 years old) is currently playing a 15 year old on Broadway. The actors in the movie Grease were generally in their 20’s when they played high school students. Who is the oldest actor ever to take on the challenge of playing the role of a teenager?
(I’d like to see Dustin Hoffman give this a try, and seal his reputation as the greatest actor ever!)
Olivia Newton John in Grease - not really a “serious” portrayal
The entire cast of 90210
The “high school” cast of Starship Troopers -
all mid late 20’s at least
I think I read somewhere that one of the Beverly High 90210 stars was 30 or so and the characters were what? High school juniors?
Nah. As a 30 year old his playing a 21 year old in The Graduate was not convincing. He did a great job of the role, but simply did not look like a 21 year old.
I saw a film once called I Was a Teenage Alien that featured a character called Leo who was a 40-year-old guy who was supposed to be a teenager. Of course it was part of the joke. Does that count? (Or would he be considered a 40-year-old guy playing an alien who’s playing a teenager?)
I understand that in an upcoming biography of the Bee Gees, they are going to play themselves from childhood on up. :eek:
Also, let’s not forget Tom Hanks in Big. 
They had the child actor film some of Tom’s scenes, and he studied those so he could imitate a kid’s mannerisms. One of my favorite movies.
How about Kathleen Turner in “Peggy Sue Got Married”? I realize that high school was a flashback for her character, but ain’t no way the voluptuous Kathleen could pass for 16, no how. She must have been 35 at the time.
How about Robin Williams in Jack
Michael J. Fox was 29 years old when “Back to the Future III” came out, and he starred as a high school student.
Judge Reinhold was 26 when he played a high school student in ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’.
That movie was full of old guys playing young guys. Sean Penn was 22, playing a HS Junior. Brian Backer (who played ‘Rat’) was also playing a Junior, and he was 26.
Matthew Broderick was 24 when he played a high school student in ‘Ferris Beuler’s Day Off’. He also played a high school student two years later in ‘Project X’. He also played a college freshman in “The Freshman”, when he was 28.
John Cusack has also played a lot of younger roles. He was already 23 when he starred as a teenager in ‘Say Anything’.
But the oldest person to play a teenager that I know of was Sabu, who played “Sabu the Stable Boy” when he was 34 years old.
Gotta love the Internet Movie Database…
On almost any “teen” movie shown on MST3K the actors portraying the teens usually looked as if they had just been through their mid-life crisis. Movies such as “Ring of Terror” and “Daddy-O”.
She was 32 in 1986 when PSGM was released. She certainly didn’t look 18.
Catherine Hicks, who was also in PSGM, was 35 when it was released. She’s better known as Dr. Gillian Taylor from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Stockard Channing was 34 when she played Rizzo, the supposed high school junior in “Grease.”
In the 1983 TV miniseries, “The Winds of War,” 39 year old Jan-Michael Vincent played a young Navy hotshot pilot fresh out of training… so he SHOULD have been 18-22. But then EVERYBODY in that series was 10-20 years too old for his/her part! Heck, a BIG subplot involved family disapproval of Vicnent’s affair with the “older woman!” How scandalous could that have been, when the “younger” man is almost 40?
Of course, if you count flashbacks, there’s “The Natural,” where 47 year old Robert Redford had to play himself as a teen!
She was 30 years old, but Stockard Channing was 34.
Malcolm Mcdowell was 28, I believe, when he played a 14 year old in A Clockwork Orange.
Kids today… never watchin’ movies made before 1975. Yeesh.
My vote goes out to not one, but two actors… Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, the most famous of the Bowery Boys. These guys started in Dead End in 1937. Leo last played Slip in 1956 in the film, ‘Crashing Las Vegas’ and Huntz last played Satch two years later in ‘In the Money’.
The Bowery Boys were, of course, teenagers the entire time. According to the IMDB, Leo was born in 1917 and Huntz in 1919 making both of them 39 the last time they played a teenager. IIRC, Leo was already a grandfather.
And there was no convoluted time-travel plot involved. They were just supposed to be teenagers.
I don’t know exactly how old Hamlet is supposed to be, but I always thought it was late teens or very early twenties.
Mel Gibson was 34 when he played Hamlet in 1990.
Kenneth Brannagh was 36 in 1996 when he played hamlet.
However, Lawrence Olivier beat them both by playing Hamlet at age 41 in 1948. Olivier was 13 years older than the actress who played Hamlet’s mother Gertrude.
In other news, Gabrielle Carteris was 34 years old during her last season as a teenager on Beverly Hills 90210.
Leslie Howard was easily in his mid 40s when he played Romeo (supposedly 14 or 15).
Sal Mineo played teens well into his 30s as did Annette and Frankie Avalon.
Character actor Richard Jackel played a recent draftee (18 or 19)in “The Devil’s Brigade” when he was in his 50s.
Yeah Arken, you’re right.
TV
Hamlet was 30, he just acted like a child. This came to a shock all of use in my Crit. Lit. class, because we thought he was young. The only part of the play that actually gives an indication of his age is the grave digger’s scene(act V) in which he is talking to the clowns and Horatio about having played with Yorick as a child; Yorick had been dead for 23 years.
Oddly, this scene was left out of the 2000 version of Hamlet- a strange modernized version staring Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles. Hawkes is actually 30.
Leslie Howard was in fact 43 when he played Romeo. Costar Norma Shearer was 34, more than 20 years older than her character (Juliet is about to turn fourteen). The other actors playing the younger characters were similarly mature: Basil Rathbone (Tybalt) was 44, Reginald Denny (Benvolio) was 45, and John Barrymore (Mercutio) was 54!
William Bendix was 42 when he played a teenaged Babe Ruth in “The Babe Ruth Story.”
The Dorsey brothers were in their 40s when they played themselves as teenagers in “Those Fabulous Dorseys.”