Coincidentally, I just learned today that Bailey Quarters used to be Thanos’s stepmother.
Carroll O’Connor was 47 and Jean Stapleton 48 the first season of All in the Family. They looked so much older.
Roy Orbison was just in his mid-fifties when he died, and I always thought he had to be close to 70 when he was in the Travelling Wilburys.
I met Wilford Brimley once. The exchange went like this:
Nellie: Hi!
Brimley: Grrmpf.
He lived in the area and was waiting for a colleague and friend of mine. Friend later said, “Yeah, he’s not too friendly.”
Some people make a career out of playing the old curmudgeon. I think it helps if your hair turns grey early.
Drew Carey has been taking care of himself in recent years and looks better than he might have at 61, but if you go back to him at 50 and greyed his hair he wouldn’t have been dissimilar to Wilford Brimley in Cocoon.
Also consider Cocoon was about old people who got a youthful rejuvenation due to the alien eggs kept in the pool. They deliberately cast elderly people who could still leap about a bit.
My grandmother grew up in a Russian shtetl, came to this country and raised five kids. She had a very hard life. I have a photo of myself as a baby, sitting on Grandma’s lap. her face is completely covered with deep wrinkles, like a woman in her 80s or 90s. She was only 65. On the other hand, my mom lived to be 92, and had very few wrinkles on her face.
Oh definitely. I just chose my examples as contemporaries or even predecessors of Brimley, to make the point that he looked prematurely old in 1985.
Or for that matter, around 40 in “The Waltons”.
[spoiler]1. That he was over the hill was a major plot point. He was limited to driving, other “pal” duties and whatever jobs his friend/boss could throw his way (which took some doing and didn’t last long).
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The thing with Bruce Lee highlighted what a phony Lee was. (And Lee’s family isnot happy about that scene.)
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It’s a work of fiction, which the ending should have reminded you of.[/spoiler]
…you saw him without the shirt, though, right?
Look at A Streetcar Named Desire! All that angst Blanche has about how she’s “aging” and “fading” and how her “youth [had] gone up the waterspout” and she’s, what, in her EARLY-TO-MID-THIRTIES?!
Then there’s Doctor Who. William Hartnell was around the same age (mid-fifties) when he played the First Doctor as Peter Capaldi was when he played the Twelfth. But William was considered to be a “crotchety old man” while Peter was a vigorous middle-aged fellow more or less in his prime. (But then again, William would’ve lived through the Second World War and its aftermath in Britain, the hardships of which in itself aged people…he served in it as well. And I believe he was quite a drinker to boot.)
It’s the same principle as to why Aunt May now looks so young in the MCU. Marisa Tomei isn’t that much younger than Aunt May (and Uncle Ben) were in 1962 when Spidey debuted. But in 1962, a pair of fifty-sixty-some people would have been born at the turn of the century, without today’s medical advances, and lived through the Great Depression and two world wars…all of which probably aged them much earlier. And lifespans were rather shorter then…you were considered to have had a full life if you reached your “threescore and ten”, or seventy.
1967: My 49-year-old uncle.
Chaim Topol was 35 in the Fiddler on the Roof movie. That just blows my mind.
Cary Grant at 50.Paul Newman at 50.
Fred Astaire at 50. (He looked 50 from the time he as 12 on, I think.)
StG
Did you mean Hustler?
Right. Not to mention, Hollywood stars have personal trainers, chefs, plastic surgeons and hairstylists. If they don’t look way better than Normal People, it’s because they are doing something wrong.
That said, even Normal People age better nowadays because we don’t smoke and wear sunscreen.
This was doing the rounds on social media a few months back.
Another player from the 1980’s. Who was 38 when that picture was taken. 3 years younger than Mr Gieselle is today.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Saints/comments/aok8sy/a_38_year_old_ken_stabler_warming_up_for_the/
Maybe I’m being whooshed but TriPolar is talking about the recent movie that is titled Hustlers.
I think he meant “Hustlers” the recent film starring Jennifer Lopez as a stripper; rather than “Hustler” the adult magazine.
But if JLo was in Hustler, that would cool too 
Wow… I’d have guessed 69, not 49.
My old age people were Edith and Archie Bunker. When I recently rewatched the series, it was a bit of a gut punch to learn that I am now older than Archie was on the show.
Same with Mr. C on Happy Days. I remember feeling sorry for Mr. C because he was depressed on his 50th birthday. Lol