When I started the prettiest teen thread I started wondering who the oldest person to regularly play a teen in a tv series was.
This should probably get split off into two categories. Oldest person to be hired to play a teen and oldest person still playing a teen at the end of a series’ run. People come and go so that might not be the same person.
Danny Masterson was a full 30 at the end of That 70’s Show, although high school graduation was a couple of years earlier in the series.
Can we break 30?
Gabrielle Carteris was 29 when Beverly Hills 90210 started in 1990.
That I know this factoid fills me with shame.
Of some minor relevance is Stockard Channing playing a teenage high-scool student in the 1978 film Grease. She was 33 at the time.
Nicholas Brendon was 26 when he was first hired to play the 16 year old Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Charisma Carpenter was, I believe, 26 when she began playing a high school sophomore on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Vanessa Marcil - but maybe they weren’t teens anymore when she stared in 90210.
The “kids” in Welcome Back, Kotter were all past their teenage years when the show started. John Travolta was 21, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs was 22, Robert Hegyes was 24, and Ron Palillo was 26.
Kristen Bell was 24 when she first played Veronica Mars.
Henry Winkler was already 29 when he first played Arthur Fonzarelli.
I don’t think Fonz was supposed to be a teen. He was not in school, he worked as a mechanic.
Jason Earles was born in 1977, which made him twenty-nine when he began playing teen-aged Jackson Stewart on Hannah Montana.
He was a drop-out. Of course, being a drop-out doesn’t necessarily mean he was supposed to be a teen.
Becky Wahlstrom was 28 when she portrayed Grace on Joan of Arcadia. Kind of makes her kissing scenes with Michael Welch, who was 16 at the time, a little oogy, don’t you think?
It always seemed to me that Fonz was supposed to be at least 3-5 years older than Richie and the other kids. That’s why they looked up to him.
The entire cast of The Kids in the Hall…
Nancy Cartwright was 32 when she first started voicing Bart Simpson. She’s 51 now.
If Exapno hadn’t specified ‘TV’ and ‘series’ together with other restrictive criteria it would have given me an opportunity to mention Robert Redford (48) briefly playing his character Roy Hobbs as a teenager in The Natural.
As it is, I can’t in all fairness give out this information.
Regarding Buffy, I don’t know how old Spike was supposed to be when he was turned, but James Marsters was in his mid-30s when he first appeared on the show.
I know the OP is about TV, but if I may go off on the movie tangent…
Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong were both 30 when Revenge of the Nerds came out; as college freshmen, they would have been 18 at the oldest.
And P. J. Soles played a high school student in Carrie(26) and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School(29).
