I don’t, but I am not very good at visual cues, and, I think more importantly, in any given year I have three or four kids that I could dress up and take to a party and no one would realize they aren’t in their 20s. Kids mature in all different ways and rates. Lastly, my kids don’t look like generic kids to be, they look like individuals.
It’s not so much that many of these actors look younger–they do. But for lack of a better word, their body language/the way they move/hold themselves shouts OLDER to me. Look at a how a 22-year-old walks and stands and interacts with people–it’s far different than the way a 16 year old walks/acts/holds themselves.
So, in that respect, 21 or 22 year olds rarely ever make me think they’re 16 or 17. Some do, but not many.
Sir Rhosis
At the age of 24, Aron Eisenberg began playing the 15-year-old Ferengi Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and continued to do so for seven years. I suspect he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without the heavy makeup.
I had the ghost of a mustache at 14 and a couple of my older brother’s friends ( who hadn’t met me yet ) wanted to know if I could buy them beer. When I was dragooned into helping to issue locker numbers at the beginning of my sophmore year in high school, one of the students was honestly befuddled to see my in gym class the next day - he had thought I was an “employee.” As a 17-year old freshmen in college my age was guessed at as 32 by someone else right around 30.
I would have been a horribly unbelievabe teen actor as a teen :p.
He’s pretty obviously just a short guy with a high voice when you see him out of his prostheses.
Smallville has some of the worst offenders this way: the opening pilot has Clark Kent starting high school at age fourteen. The actor, Tom Welling, would have been 24 at that point.
It does, however, really have an effect when you can tell an actor is really the “right” age - Claire on Heroes is played by an honest-to-goodness teenager (albeit a great actor) and it does really matter, emotionally. You worry more about her because you can tell she’s a child.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Veronica Mars yet. Kristen Bell was 24 playing 17 the first season, and did a great job. The rest of the high school cast was around 20-22.
I was wondering when someone was going to mention him. Some of the other actors mentioned I could buy as teenagers but Tom Welling always looked out of place. Does this guy look remotely 15 to anybody?
She is a very fine actor but didn’t, and doesn’t, look like a teenager.
I also love how they’ll cast this hard body twenty something year old as not only being young, but being an outcast, misfit, not totally cool type. Dawson’s Creek gave me the same problem–in what universe are Joshua Jackson or Katie Holmes black sheep? Of course it never keeps me from enjoying the shows.
Heh. I just finished watching the entire first season on DVD, and when the character’s age was finally mentioned I thought, “No way does she look 15!”
Speaking of which, Claire is the second character I’ve seen recently who gets voted Homecoming Queen at age 15-16. Is this a regional thing? Because at both high schools I attended (and every other RL high school I’ve heard of), Homecoming Queen is reserved for a Senior girl. A 15-16YO is going to be a Sophomore or Junior.
The cast of the film “ATL” all seemed believable to me as teenagers. TI must be in his late 20s or early 30s.
While I do think Claire is good actor, I was completely floored when I found out she was a real teenager. I would have said she was 21 at the youngest.
Anne Hathaway(who was almost 21 when she made this movie) in The Princess Diaries–no way did she look 15 (or ugly duckling-ish).
I work with girls in the 15-17 age range a lot and I kind of had the opposite reaction, I was floored that they were using a real teenager from the first time I saw her. she a pretty mature girl for that age but fits into my experience with girls in that age range perfectly.
I think its mostly what you are used to dealing with. if you work with young people its going to be a lot easier to spot the one whos out of place.
How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m 41, but I have a number of teenage girls for coworkers, in the 16-19 range. Among them are the previously-mentioned 18YO who looks closer to 12-13, as well as another 18YO who is only a couple months older than the first but looks 23. Also, there’s a 14YO girl at my church who looks older than her 16YO sister.
I’ll have to agree with what a previous poster said about looking at how these girls carry themselves (and at how they behave) rather than at their physical appearance. I suppose this is why Claire seems older to me - she carries herself like a woman a few years older. Summer Glau comes off as much younger on Terminator, despite being ~8 years older than Hayden, though in her case the voice and speech mannerisms may have something to do with it.
Something else worth mentioning: I quit drinking at age 28, and didn’t patronize bars for almost 10 years. On top of that, I had very little contact with teenagers. Then I started a band and we played in bars. I remember, during that first gig, looking around and wondering, “Is anybody checking ID around here?” because they all looked like high school kids to me. I finally understood why everybody called me a “puppy” when I was 21 
Shit, Dylan looks like he’s pushing 40 with that “five” head of receding hair!
What about Alison Lohman? She routinely plays a teenager and she’s well into her late 20s.
Missed it by that much. (give or take a few days)
At my age the question doesn’t have meaning. How can you tell a 21 year old from a 17 year old. Same thing. Cops are kids, bus drivers are kids, actors mostly kids.