# Greatest age disparity between actor/character? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 21, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776 "2019-11-21T15:18:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/1 "2019-11-21T15:18:13Z")
My wife and I started watching - and are enjoying - Atypical. 2 of the main characters are HS students - an 18 yr old senior and his sophomore sister. The actor who plays the 18-yr old is 25, and the sophomore actor is 23. I assumed the actors were older than their characters, but for some stupid reason, it sorta niggles at me now that I know these are grown-ups well into their 20s, portraying teenage emotions/situations. (Yeah - I know - ACTING!) Made me wonder what were some of the greatest disparities between the age of the actor and the character played. I guess it could be measured either in years or as a percentage of the character’s age. So my examples are both approx 7 years older than their characters, and the younger is 43.75% older than her character’s age. I’m sure those are nowhere near the most extreme. And I assume some younger actors have played considerable older with aging make-up/tech. For purposes of this thread, I’m thinking about “human” characters. Tho if you find it entertaining, feel free to point out some biblical or SF character that is hundreds or thousands of years old. And I’m thinking about visual portrayals - not voiceovers. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2019, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/2 "2019-11-21T15:29:57Z")
Gabrielle Carteris is often cited as an example (and she’s joked about it). She was 29 years old, playing a high school student, in the first season of _Beverly Hills, 90210_. And the show then ran for several more years. I don’t specifically know how old Carteris was when her character finally graduated from high school. If we’re including movies, it might be Stockard Channing in _Grease_. She played a high school student at 34. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/3 "2019-11-21T15:30:23Z")
The Irishman might qualify although in the opposite direction. Marlon Brando was 48 when he played the septuagenarian Don Corleone. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/4 "2019-11-21T15:30:52Z")
Gabrielle Carteris was 29 when she started playing a school kid on _Beverly Hills 90210_. The show never said how old J.J. was supposed to be on _Good Times_, but Jimmie Walker was only seven years younger than his TV dad, John Amos. In the movie _Grease_, Stockard Channing was 34 playing a high school senior. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/5 "2019-11-21T15:33:37Z")
Dustin Hoffman was 33 in 1970 when he played 121 year old Jack Crabb in **Little Big Man**. That’s 88 years’ difference ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/6 "2019-11-21T15:33:50Z")
Mel Brooks has played a [2000 year old man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Year_Old_Man) on television. Mel may be ancient but he isn’t that ancient. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/7 "2019-11-21T15:41:40Z")
> **["Magnum, P.I." Basket Case (TV Episode 1983) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0639626/?ref_=ttep_ep14)** > > Basket Case: Directed by Ivan Dixon. With Tom Selleck, John Hillerman, Roger E. Mosley, Larry Manetti. TC and Magnum are each coaching a youth basketball team and a young girl joins TM's team. In this episode of Magnum PI, Dana Hill [Dana Hill - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0384162/?ref_=tt_cl_t6) was 19 but played a 12 year old star basketball player. She had complications from diabetes that had stunted her growth. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/8 "2019-11-21T15:43:26Z")
Just saw part of a bad movie starring Aimee Garcia as a high school student. The movie was called Go For it and is from 2011. As she was born in 1978, she was a 33 year old High school student. I should add, terrible movie. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/9 "2019-11-21T15:46:15Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Mel Brooks has played a [2000 year old man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Year_Old_Man) on television. Mel may be ancient but he isn’t that ancient. If you want to go there, George Burns as God, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Ian McKellan as Gandalf, pretty much anyone who ever played an Angel that was suppose to be from pre-Eden times. Most of the Elves in the Lord of the Rings were over 2000 years old. Galadriel was around 7000 years old though. Even Arwen was around 2700. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/10 "2019-11-21T15:46:26Z")
Those strike me as pretty normal ages for actors playing high school kids. Tobey Maguire was 27 in his first Spiderman film and Peter Parker was a high school student. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/11 "2019-11-21T15:46:26Z")
George Burns playing God in Oh, God. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/12 "2019-11-21T15:55:39Z")
More on target, Robert Redford in the Natural was 48. In the early scenes he is playing age 18 or 19 for his tryouts. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2019, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/13 "2019-11-21T16:00:45Z")
Similarly, I saw Richard Harris on stage playing King Arthur in **Camelot**. He must have been about 53 at the time, but played a teenage (or early 20s) Arthur at the beginning. That’s about thirty some years. I had a front row seat. He looked a LOT older than 53 up close, even playing a kid. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/14 "2019-11-21T16:17:04Z")
Not that it invalidates them in the context of this thread, but instances of age mismatch in which the ages and/or characters are clearly either fantastical or due to depicting supernatural events seems like it ought to be its own, mostly hand-waveable category. Another hand-waveable category might be a mismatch in one portion of a work due to a need to have the character age over time, but to want to use the same actor throughout for perfectly understandable, practical reasons. It’s also much easier to up-age a young person to look old, and there may be practical reasons as well. Dick Van Dyke as the old banker in **Marry Poppins** , for instance. The most egregious, and very hard to hand-wave IMHO, offenses are the ones where the actor is greatly mismatched from the character they portray, and it’s not due to any of the above reasons. In this category, I’ll throw in Franchot Tone as Roger Byam in the original screen adaptation of _Mutiny on the Bounty_ (1935). The character, a midshipman, is supposed to be **fifteen** in the beginning. Though he does age a few years during the course of the voyage and return (to **nineteen** , I believe), that’s still a long way off from Franchot Tone, who was in fact **thirty years old** when he portrayed the character. What made it especially cringeworthy is that they didn’t just up-age the character in GoT fashion, they actually portrayed him as an adolescent, living with his mother and having a boyish demeanor at the start of the film. It was so jarring that it completely derailed the entire the film for me. As an honorable mention, many of the actors in _Community_ were significantly mismatched but, to the credit of the casting people, they picked actors who still actually kind of looked the age they were supposed to portray. Dani Pudi, who played (18/19-year-old during season one) Abed was 29/30. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/15 "2019-11-21T16:24:20Z")
> [@california\_jobcase](#): > > …The show never said how old J.J. was supposed to be on _Good Times_, but Jimmie Walker was only seven years younger than his TV dad, John Amos. … I like to check shows/movies I watched on IMDB. They often point out when the actors portraying parent/child characters are quite close in age. Not sure I can recall seeing them as actually inverted… ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/16 "2019-11-21T16:27:29Z")
Another aging of a character is Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait. And the mother/son in North by Northwest are almost the same age in real life. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2019, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/17 "2019-11-21T16:29:52Z")
The cast of _Wet Hot American Summer_ were all in their early 30s playing teenages. Then they came back 14 years later to play slightly younger teenagers. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/18 "2019-11-21T16:36:56Z")
In The Crown, Helena Botham Carter (53) plays a 34 year old Princess Margaret while Olivia Coleman (45) plays her 38 year old older sister. I also think its funny that Tobias Menzies (45) is slathered in aging make up to look like 43 year old Prince Phillip. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2019, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/19 "2019-11-21T16:50:10Z")
> [@Author\_Balk](#): > > Another aging of a character is Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait. > And the mother/son in North by Northwest are almost the same age in real life. In **Chitty Chitty Bang Bang** (1968) Lionel Jeffries played Dick van Dyke’s father, even though van Dyke was six months older than Jeffries. Harrison Ford is only twelve years younger than Sean Connery, who played his father in **Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade** ---
**Author:** ![Dobbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Dobbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dobbs)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776/20 "2019-11-21T17:07:49Z")
From IMDB - [Shirley] Henderson was born November 24, 1965, making her 37 when she played Moaning Myrtle (the ghost of 14-year-old Myrtle Warren) in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (and, therefore, 40, when she reprised the role in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”). Henderson was the oldest actress (and, in fact, the oldest _person_) to play a Hogwarts student in any of the films. (The oldest–or Seventh-Year–students were supposed to be 17 at the start of the school year on September 1.). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-age-disparity-between-actor-character/843776.md?page=2)