Teen movies with teen actors?

Cafe Society
21

Ellis Dee writes:

> I suspect most of the best candidates will involve movies where the women are
> in their teens and the men are in their mid-20s.

That’s certainly not universally true. Consider the movie Grease, with male supposed high schoolers:

John Travolta, 24
Jeff Conway, 27
Barry Pearl, 28
Kelly Ward, 21
Michael Tucci, 32

and female supposed high schoolers:

Didi Conn, 27
Olivia Newton-John, 29
Stockard Channing, 34
Dinah Manoff, 20
Jamie Donnelly, 31

which means that the females were on average older than the males. (Ages are at the time of the release of the film.) I don’t know what’s true of supposed teenagers in most films.

22

How young do you have to be for child labor laws to kick in?

23

Under 18.

24

Mia Sara was 19 in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” The rest of the main characters had left their teens well behind them.

25

Most of the “teen” cast of 10 things I hate about you were still teens (or had just hit 20) at the time of its release… with an interesting exception being Gabrielle Union, who while playing one of the younger characters in the movie was 27 or so, considerably older than the actors playing the high school seniors. :slight_smile:

26

The Goonies
Sean Astin - 14
Corey Feldman - 14
Jonathan Ke Quan - 14
Jeff Cohen - 11
Josh Brolin - 17
Kerri Green - 18
Martha Plimpton - 15

27

In Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet,shot in 1968, Olivia Hussey was, I believe, 16, and Leonard Whiting 18.
I think the two were a bit older than the characters in Shakespeare’s play, but not older by very much.

28

Obviously. A much better example of a movie that bucks the trend is the original American Pie. The guys averaged around 20 while the girls averaged around 27.

29

Here are regulations governing the employment of children in the film industry. These apply to any films made in California AND those for which children are hired in California, even if the production is out of state.

The hours of employment restrictions may not seem like any big deal until you consider that film shoots typically last 10 to 16 hours and can go longer.

These are legal restrictions and do not take into account any additional regulations the unions may impose.

Juliet’s age is spelled out in the text.

I don’t think Romeo’s is spelled out, but the tragedy makes a lot more sense if you think of them both as crazy mixed-up kids. One criticism I frequently see of this play is that the protagonists don’t behave rationally, to which I say, duh.

30

I just wanted to post about how much I love that movie as well

31

Isaac Asimov, in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, posited a theory I’ve never seen elsewhere: The play is really about the folly of romanticism – not the folly of young love, but the folly of young peoples’ romantic ideas. Several clues indicate the Montague-Capulet feud is on its last legs and only a few psychos like Tybalt are keeping it alive. Viz., the scene where Romeo crashes Capulet’s party, Act I, Scene 5:

In the next moment, Romeo sees and falls for Juliet. In light of the above, he probably could go to her father and sue openly for her hand. But she is all excited about having a secret forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers from two houses at variance, and Romeo foolishly indulges her, with tragic consequences.

32

I have read that she did not attend at the premiere, because she wasn’t old enough to view her own nudity. I don’t know if this is true or not.