Sloppy writing on my part really, I’m sorry.
Hamlet could be anywhere from at least 25 (how many people do you know who have vivid memories of life from birth to 2?) to as old as 38 dependng on when Yorrick died. We know Hamlet was *at least * 24.
Thanks for the info on Gump, watsonwil. Sometimes I think I’m the only person who hasn’t seen that movie.
How about the original the Manchurian Candidate? Then-37 year old Angela Lansbury played the role of then-34 year old Laurence Harvey’s mother.
Lansbury also starred as “Miss Marple” in a bigscreen treatment of Agatha Christie’s “the Mirror Crack’d.” I’m not sure when that film came out (at least the mid-70s), but in this Lansbury looked quite young to be playing the part of the octegenarian sleuth.
Has anyone here seen Alexander? Just wondering how well they pulled off Val Kilmer (age 45) and Angelina Jolie (age 29) as the parents of Colin Farrell (age 28).
How about the original the Manchurian Candidate? Then-37 year old Angela Lansbury played the role of then-34 year old Laurence Harvey’s mother.
Lansbury also starred as “Miss Marple” in a bigscreen treatment of Agatha Christie’s “the Mirror Crack’d.” I’m not sure when that film came out (at least the mid-70s), but in this Lansbury looked quite young to be playing the part of the octegenarian sleuth.
Actually, if you take everything in the graveyard scene literally, Hamlet is exactly thirty. The gravedigger says he has “been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years,” and that he got his job on “the very day that young Hamlet was born.”
On the other hand, Shakespeare was notoriously sloppy about such details – e.g., he establishes Lady Capulet’s age as around twenty-eight in the first act of Romeo and Juliet, and then has her talking about her “old age” in the last scene, which takes place less than a week later. And don’t get me started on the histories 
I never notice this sort of thing. Even in teen dramadies, I’m almost always oblivious that the 16 year old protagonist is played by a 35 year old.
My latest peeve is seeing 61yo Robert DeNiro playing 10yo Dakota Fanning’s father in Hide and Seek. Possible? Of course. Realistic? Hell, no.
I was very suprised when I read Dune and discovered that Paul is supposed to be 15 years old.
Kyle MacLachlin was 25 when he played the role. The thing is, he was supposed to be 15. They just changed the role.
Totally warped in the recent De-Lovely: 60-ish Kevin Kline opposite 30-ish Ashley Judd. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Cole Porter’s wife Linda was significantly older than he was.
The actor’s chronological age isn’t what’s at issue, it’s whether or not they can physically look the age of the character they are playing. Add to that that a movie version might change the age of a character to better fit the actor playing said character, and you can have huge discrepencies in the age of a character in the source material and the age of the actor playing her in a movie.
For example, there’s really no reason a forty year old shouldn’t play Hamlet. The story works just as well. But the entire basic plot of Romeo and Juliet revolves around their being minors; you can’t have 30 and 40 year olds playing those parts and have it work. Aging them slightly from 13 to 16 or 17 works just fine; there’s no contradiction to the main plot thread.
On the other hand, King Lear has to be fairly old, or the story just doesn’t work. But going old really isn’t as difficult as going younger–Patrick Stewart did an excellent job as Lear in the updated Western version King of Texas.
But sometimes an actor is just too young for the part–Nicole Kidman as a highly regarded neurologist in private practice in Days of Thunder, looking like she’s about the right age to be starting med school.
Whoa! Kevin Kline may be getting up there, but no way is he “60-ish.” He looks 45, and I think he’s only about 55.
A quickie websearch give his birth date as October 24, 1947, so he’s about 58, which is 60-ish, I think. Mr. Kline is 20,912 days old today.
I noticed this a couple months ago while watching The Pride of the Yankees - Gary Cooper was over 40 when it was made, but in all the early parts of the film he’s supposed to be an early 20s ballplayer.
(Random aside: When I went to IMDB to look up this film, it gave Bride of Frankenstein as the first match. I can understand “Pride” instead of “Bride”, but it would be pretty impressive to accidentally type “the Yankees” instead of “Frankenstein”.)
::: shrug::: My mother was 40 when my sister was born, and 45 when I came along. I don’t see older mothers as being that unusal.
Again when I was growing up, the widower across the street married an 18 year old girl at 63, and fathered a daughter at 64. :eek: Common, not really, but not unheard of either.
Hey, don’t be dissing the Bride. She batted .320 in her rookie year.
Rachel Griffiths plays Johnny Depp’s mother in Blow despite being about six years younger. As with Sally Field in Forrest Gump, though, the story is biographical and in early scenes where the main character is in his childhood, the actress playing his mother can appear as more-or-less her actual age, and pile on gray wigs and makeup for later scenes.
MST3K did a long running riff on this subject in Ring of Terror(1962). All the characters were supposed to be first year med students and yet they all looked to be in their 40’s. In fact, the star, George Mather, was 42 at the time.
The one I find irksome is the police “Lieutenent” or “Captain” who hasn’t even squeaked by the age of 30 yet. I’ve always found it really hard to imagine that someone who is barely older than most of the police academy grads, has earned enough seniority and experience to be that high up in the ranks.
The actor Ted Wass (SOAP, Oh God, You Devil) was called to audition for the sit-com Blossom when he was 38 and had just had some stage runs in Grease and other shows as teenagers and was still getting juvenile parts. He read the description of the series- the life and misadventures of a precocious teenaged girl and her older brothers, and told the casting director that he appreciated the confidence but didn’t feel he could realistically play teenagers anymore. The casting director looked at him like he was deranged and told him “Of course you can’t, we’re interested in you for their father.” He said it was affirming he had matured and also depressing.
Ellie Mae’s age on The Beverly Hillbillies was never exactly given but she seemed to have been about 14 or 15 when the show began and she was played by a quite full growed and filled out 29 year old Donna Douglas.
On both The Jeffersons and Good Times, the husbands and wives were supposed to be roughly the same age but on both shows the actress playing the wife (Isabel Sanford & Esther Rolle) was old enough to be her “husband’s” mother (a 20 year and 19 year age differences respectively).
One of the worst casting jobs ever was on an episode of Who’s the Boss? in which the mother of 60 something Mona (Katherine Helmond) visited. The same character by extension would have been the grandmother of the 30 something Judith Light and the great-grandmother of teenager Danny Pintauro. She was played by an actress who couldn’t have been a day over 60- she looked younger than Katherine Helmond. (Judith Anderson would have been good and she was still alive and sufficiently ancient at the time.)
Lorne Greene was only 13 years older than his two oldest “sons” on Bonanza. He was 21 when Michael Landon was born- old enough to be his father but Little Joe was supposed to have been born fairly late in Ben’s squiring days.
In the movie Elizabeth Sir Richard Attenborough played Sir William Cecil. Attenborough was 75 and the character he was playing was in his mid 30s.
The only thing that bothered me about the movie The Lion in Winter (sure it’s campy, but it’s fun and high class campy) was Peter O’Toole’s age. He was just a hair too young to play Henry, a man of 50 in the 12th century (which would be similar to a man of 70 today). While there really was a sizeable age difference for the time twixt Henry & Eleanor, the fact that O’Toole was in fact only marginally older than his “sons” (Anthony Hopkins and John Castle) was noticeable. (In the movie Troy O’Toole again shares the screen with Nigel Terry, the youngest son [John] from the movie who is 13 years younger than O’Toole but now looks the same age.)
The movie was remade with Patrick Stewart who in some ways actually made a better Henry (though a bit subdued) but just didn’t have the chemistry with his queen (Glenn Close) that O’Toole had with Hepburn (plus Close is too young for Eleanor, who was in her early 60s [similar to mid-70s today]).
An odd case of not being old enough: On Golden Pond was recently remade as a reunion for Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer and while they’re not terribly young to play the roles both have had so many facelifts and tanning sessions that they weren’t believable as a crotchety old New England couple. (I would love to see the James Earl Jones/Diahann Carroll version that is slated for Broadway this year.)
Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea.
Spacey was 44 or 45 when they shot the movie. Darin was 37 when he died.