# Biggest age difference between an actor and the character that they portray **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2021, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399 "2021-03-22T04:46:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/41 "2021-03-23T01:50:32Z")
Read something interesting today. Crispin Glover, who played the father of Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future, is three years younger than Michael J. Fox. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/42 "2021-03-25T21:00:01Z")
That poses a slightly different scenario - biggest difference in real vs on-screen ages of two actors together. Sally Field (1946) and Tom Hanks (1956) portrayed mother and son in Forrest Gump, but approximate agemates in Punchline. In Golden Girls, Estelle Getty (born 1923) played the mother of Bea Arthur (born 1922). In Rosewood, Lorraine Toussaint (b. 1960) played mom to Morris Chestnut (b. 1969). Not quite as astonishing as Golden Girls! In I Love Lucy, Vivian Vance (1909) was married to William Frawley (1897) - a 22 year age difference. They never explicitly said that Ethel was either an agemate to Fred, OR a much younger trophy wife, but they sort of played it as though she and Fred were similar. In reality Vivian was only 2 years older than Lucy. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2021, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/43 "2021-03-25T21:03:38Z")
Not a huge difference, but I get thrown off whenever there’s a flashback in _Better Call Saul._ Odenkirk is already playing a younger version of himself to begin with, but then when there’s a flashback you’ve got a 55+ year old portraying someone who’s supposed to be in his late 20’s/early 30’s. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/44 "2021-03-27T05:45:12Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > upcoming series “Chad” has 39 year old Nasim Pedrad playing a 14 year old I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IMDB score that low. 1.9. [Pen15](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8324422/) has two mid thirties women playing, you guessed it, 15 year olds. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/45 "2021-03-27T09:00:14Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Mae West was 84 when she did _Sextette_ . I can’t find a cite but IIRC her character Marlo Manners was supposed to be in her late 20s. I believe that she wasn’t supposed to be in her late 20s but rather was supposed to be a woman of about 84 who still was (supposedly) as sexually desirable as someone in her late 20s. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/46 "2021-03-27T09:05:57Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IMDB score that low. 1.9. I think we can ignore the ratings of a TV show that hasn’t even premiered yet. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/47 "2021-03-27T09:44:50Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Probably some good examples of characters who aged over the course of a movie, portrayed by the same actor over the course of the movie (e.g. Tom Hanks would have been in his late 30s when _Forrest Gump_ was filmed). IIRC, the interesting factoid about **Prometheus** was that they’d had Max von Sydow in mind to play the ooooold guy bankrolling the mission, but then they decided, _hey, why not cast Guy Pearce? That way, he can do all the ooooold-guy stuff, plus we can also film him doing much-younger-guy stuff! Maybe a dream sequence! Maybe a flashback! All kinds of options!_ Which maybe wouldn’t be a great example for this thread; but, after they’d cast him as the ooooold guy, they later realized, _you know, we don’t really need a much-younger-guy scene._ ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2021, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/48 "2021-03-28T07:58:52Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I think we can ignore the ratings of a TV show that hasn’t even premiered yet. It has 200 reviews. Are people allowed to vote before they can see the show on IMDB? That would seem to defeat the purpose of reviews. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2021, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/49 "2021-03-28T11:48:00Z")
I seem to recall cases where people began reviewing a film before it had been seen anywhere, not just in regular theaters but at film festivals where films often get shown before they open anywhere else. The people who run the IMDb in such cases would delete all the reviews in those cases. They haven’t in this case. I think the people who run the IMDb just missed what’s going on here. Does anyone know how to notify them? ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/50 "2021-03-28T14:31:24Z")
Vicki Lawrence must have a place on this list somewhere. I don’t think that the character’s specific age was ever revealed, but Vicki was in her mid-20s when she starting playing a grandmother, “Mama,” on the Carol Burnett show. She was the youngest member of the regular cast, but she played one of the oldest characters. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2021, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/51 "2021-03-28T15:30:59Z")
Not as extreme an example as some that have been given in this thread but it happened to have occurred to me just earlier today that Zendaya Coleman (who is 24) has been playing a high school student for pretty much her entire career. She was Rocky Blue in _Shake It Up_ from 2010 to 2013, K.C. Cooper in _K.C. Undercover_ from 2015 to 2018, MJ in the Spiderman movies in 2017 and 2019, and Rue Bennett in _Euphoria_ from 2019 to the present. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/52 "2021-03-29T03:17:15Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > Barbra Streisand was meant to be a teenage girl as the title character in _Yentl_ . She was 41 at the time. I love her singing voice, but it has always bothered me that a 26-year old Streisand was cast as Dolly Levi, “a widow in her middle years” in the film version of _Hello Dolly!_ You can interpret “middle years” however you want, but she was probably at least twenty years shy of the age of the character she was playing. I saw Richard Harris playing King Arthur onstage in **Camelot** when he was 53. At the start of the play he portrays the young Arthur, who is supposed to be something like 20 at the time. I had a seat close to the stage, and seeing the crows-footed Harris trying to portray someone just out of his teens was a trial of my Willing Suspension of Disbelief. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/53 "2021-03-29T03:43:31Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > It has 200 reviews. Are people allowed to vote before they can see the show on IMDB? That would seem to defeat the purpose of reviews. Possibly the cross-gender casting of a woman in the title role has something to do with it? Call it a hunch. Sigh. It’s going to be on Prime Video, so maybe instead there is a posse of fanboys trying to get some other show/movie on that service re-cut/canceled/un-canceled. That is apparently happening to _Godzilla v. Kong_ right now — mass down-rating for a big release on HBOMax. (Hashtag releasethesnyderverse if you really want to know more.) ---
**Author:** ![Madam\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madam_librarian/32/3123_2.png) [@Madam\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Madam_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/54 "2021-03-29T03:52:10Z")
Speaking of _Hello, Dolly!,_ Carol Channing played that “middle years” role on Broadway at 43 AND 76. Ann Bancroft was only 36 (possibly 35 when it was filmed) in _The Graduate_, playing the mother of her on-screen daughter, Katherine Ross, who was 27. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/55 "2021-03-29T04:03:23Z")
> [@snoe](#): > > It’s going to be on Prime Video And on TBS. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/56 "2021-03-29T04:28:10Z")
> [@snoe](#): > > Possibly the cross-gender casting of a woman in the title role has something to do with it? Call it a hunch. Sigh. Possibly the cross-generational casting has something to do with it as well? Call it a hunch, after watching the trailers, I was so weirded out and so embarrassed for anyone connected to _Chad._ I’d be one of those doing anything I could to vote it down for the sake of my fellow humans. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/57 "2021-03-29T04:38:31Z")
Ah, missed that they were doing the _Pen15_ cross-gen thing. I will take your word for it on the trailer — life is short :). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/58 "2021-03-29T07:14:23Z")
One trailer for it has already been posted, and you can see more trailers for it just by putting “Chad trailer” into YouTube. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/59 "2021-03-29T11:00:24Z")
Rex Harrison played Henry Higgins at 48 - and at 72 - the character is probably about 40. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2021, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399/60 "2021-03-29T11:59:54Z")
Lots of actors reprised their roles later in their careers, come to think of it. Yul Brynner first played King Mongkut in _The King and I_ in 1951 at the age of 31. I saw him on Broadway in the revival in 1977, when he was 57. He continued doing it until he was 65 in 1985. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-age-difference-between-an-actor-and-the-character-that-they-portray/938399.md?page=4)