English actress Stephanie Cole played a cantankerous retirement home resident in Waiting for God at the age of 48.
David Jason had a recurring role as the elderly prisoner Blanco Webb in Porridge, while also playing the (somewhat) youthful Granville in Open All Hours.
Clive Dunn was also only 48 when cast as the 70 year old Lance Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army.
I always thought John Hurt looked kind of old.
Ward Bond. Don’t think I ever saw him in anything where he didn’t look like an uncle or a grandfather. But then he was born in 1903, so by the time he was in Wagon Train he was in his 50s.
Strother Martin, who was usually playing the mayor of a western town or some other local elder or a smarmy bad guy.
Jack Elam always looked old to me when he wasn’t just going for disreputable.
Lorne Greene always looked older than his years.
Ed Asner has looked old forever. Even Lou Grant looked older than his stated age (mid 40s during MTM)
IIRC he was suppose to be 10 years older as his character fought in WW2 but IRL he was still a teen by the time the war ended.
I figured the character was in his early 60’s going by the timeline. Mr. Miyagi served in WWII, say that at the end of the war he was 24. Thirty-nine more years brings the time to 1984, when the movie came out. So he would have been sixty-three, give or take a little.
Character actor James Tolkan always looked at least a decade older than his actual age.
Jack Elam is a special case. He played a lot of crazy old guys later in his career, but had a solid career in westerns before he got walleyed.
mrAru and I were watching some film or another yesterday morning and we were commenting on how whomever the actor was [or maybe the character in the flick] was about the same age mrAru was currently and that the person playing someone in their 30s was actually somewhere around 18 or 19 and that everything had shifted. mrAru looked like the guy in his 30s though he was 56, and that we remember what he looked like at 30 when we moved to Connecticut and it was what the 18 year old looked like, and we joked that the new crop of guys at submarine school looked like they were about 12 years old.
I know I don’t have the gray hair [well, I do have gray, but as a family trait we go partially gray early, in our 20s and rarely go past 50 percent gray. I have a pic of my mom in her coffin at the age of 96 and her hair is about half gray] I don’t have the wrinkles, though I do have the creaky achy bones, but that is as a result of a decade of sports injuries. mrAru has no hair, but he also has not the wrinkles, and he looks at best about 40 or so.
Ian Wolfe looked old in 1930s, But I know him from WKRP as Hersh, Momma Carlson’s ancient butler and Mr. Atoz from Star Trek. So when I saw him as the devil opposite Lionel Barrymore, I thought it must be a look alike father.
Sir Patrick Stewart maintained a very consistent, “older but not too old” look for decades.
He was born in 1940, but thanks to going bald at a young age, he played older characters for a long time. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stewart was 47 when the series started, but his character, Jean-Luc Picard, was 59 at that point.
Stewart is now 79, and while he certainly looks older than he did in 1987, he doesn’t really look 33 years older.
My dad used to joke that Maggie Smith was 60 for about 30 years.
Charles Lane looked past middle age in It’s a Wonderful Life, and played old guys almost until he hit a century in age.
It might have been on this board that I recently read that Wil Wheaton is now the same age that Patrick Stewart was when ST:TNG premiered.
Irene Ryan looked old as the hills long before she became Granny in The Beverly Hillbillies starting at age 62. All I can say is she must have been one heavy smoker.
Jim Backus, the voice of Mr. Magoo and also Thurston Howell on Gilligan’s Island
Character actor Paul Ford was born old, I think.
Easy
Beaulah Bondi…Jimmy Stewart’s mother in IAWL?
Cloris Leachman has looked old for a long, long time.
She was 41 in this clip.
Lionel Jeffries
I remember him as Cavor in The First Men in the Moon, King Pellinore in Camelot, and similar parts, always playing a grandfatherly older man.
He played Dick Van Duke’s father, Grandpa Bungie Potts, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was actually six months younger than Van Dyke. He was only 42 at the time.
