A 1979 British TV play Blue Remembered Hills had a cast of well known and respected actors, aged between mid 30s to their 50s who played a bunch of 9 year old kids.
From what I’ve read, Brad Pitt’s upcoming movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about a man who ages backwards, starting from extreme old going back to early childhood. According to Entertainment Weekly, he will actually play the character in ALL stages of his life, no matter the age, using CGI effects.
I think that, depending on the plot (and whether I’m right), this’ll be a VERY good answer to the OP’s question, even if it ends up being wrong.
(I’m assuming the OP wants to also exclude characters who are immortal and ageless, or else the answer might well be Christopher Lambert and/or Adrian Paul. :D)
Born 1929…he’ll be 80 in Nov 09. Geez…considering his nickname is “World’s Oldest Teenager,” we might conclude he’s about 60 years older than the role. Winner?
Keiko Agena was 28 in the first season of Gilmore Girls playing a 14 year old.
Hamlet’s age is given, actually – in the gravedigger scene. He’s thirty, so a 41-year-old actor isn’t that much of a stretch. (And really, how could someone with Hamlet’s personality NOT be a perpetual grad student? :D)
And Mrs. Robinson became pregnant with Elaine when she was in college, so she’s probably only fortyish.
I don’t think it’s QUITE that bad. Lane, Keiko’s character, was probably 15 or 16; she and Rory in the same grade, and Rory turns 16 early in the season.
More often, I’ve read commentators suggest that Hamlet’s age just isn’t consistent. You’re correct that he’s 30 after he returns, but he seems younger than that earlier. The ‘perpetual grad student’ angle always worked for me, but that may not be what was intended.
I read an interesting essay last week that talked about how the gravedigger’s line was changed between early versions - initially the line indicated that the gravedigger was 30, and it had been something like 12 years since Yorick died, not 23.
In the novel A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler, Evie Decker is 17. The character is not-very-believably played by 32-year-old Lili Tyler in the film.
In Karate Kid Part III, the evil pony-tailed villain Terry Silver is supposed to be a Vietnam War buddy of John Kreese, terrorizing the 17-year-old Daniel. In reality, Thomas Ian Griffith, who played Silver, was 26 - a year YOUNGER than Ralph Macchio.
Possibly the most absurd age disparity in the history of Hollywood, but the movie is so incredibly obscure that few are likely to know about it.
Martin Short/Clifford, 35 years
Elizabeth Taylor/Maggie Simpson, 60 years
In 1993 a 45 year old Meryl Streep made a very unconvincing 16 year old Clara in The House of Spirits.
Bolo Yeung (Chong Li) was 50 years old when Bloodsport came out, how old do you expect Chong was supposed to be, 30 or so? That’s 20 years.
When Clifford came out, Martin Short was 44 years old. He was playing a 10 year old.
Emma Thompson was 36 when Sense & Sensibility was released, she played 19 year old Elinor.
Olivia Newton-John was 30 when she starred in Grease (which could explain why the other actors were also old)
Dick Van Dyke played the really old banker in Mary Poppins (in addition to his role of Bert)
That’s the one I came in to mention. While there were flashbacks, she was 110 for half of her screen time, so there was a 69 year age difference between her and her character. (And she was incredible— that water fountain scene, my God…- I hate the Jena 6 Tie-In of this video, but for those who’ve never seen it you have to watch it on YT starting at :20 [though without context it’ll lose a lot] ).
She, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, all of them 60 or close to, play women in their late 30s in MAMMA MIA. (Streep’s character has a 20 year old daughter born when she was about 18 or 19.)
Wow! The same was true for Good Times, John Amos was 20 years younger than Esther Rolle!
Although he was still great in the role (as always) Jimmy Stewart was way too old to have played Charles Lindbergh in 1957. Lindbergh was 25 when he made his flight and Stewart was nearly 50 then (and looked it!)
Robert Wagner and Spencer Tracy played brothers in the movie The Mountain. No reference was made to them being half brothers or there being an age gap- presumably they were supposed to be close in age, in spite of Tracy being 30 years older than Wagner, so one of them was playing a character a lot of out of their age range.
In Travels with my Aunt Maggie Smith is 38 years old. She plays a character whose age is unspecified but certainly over 60, probably closer to 70, and the same character when she’s a schoolgirl of perhaps 16 - they must have emptied the shops of vaseline for that sequence.
I was going to say Marion Cotillard in Ma Vie En Rose, but I then I realized that she was about 34 and Edith Piaf was only 48 when she died…she looked way older.
Ali McGraw was 45 when she played Natalie Jastrow in “The Winds of War.” Natalie was in her early 20s