It’s normal for actors to play characters of a different age; it’s easier to hire a 20-year-old to play a 16 year old for a few years than to get a 16-year old and hope he doesn’t change appearance too much (and also deal with the rules for employing under-18-year olds). But sometimes there seems to be no reason for the difference, other than perhaps vanity on the part of the actor.
For example, a recent episode of 911: Lone Star opens with a lengthy flashback to 1984 (explicitly dated), about two kids, one 10, and one about 14. We learn that the older kid is the same character as Rob Lowe’s character in the present. Rob Lowe was 20 in 1984. There was no reason that the flashback scene couldn’t have been set in 1978 if they needed the character to be about 14 - so I suspect that Rob Lowe didn’t want to be presented as someone who was an adult in the early 1980s.
I mean, there’s nothing unusual about a 58-year-old actor playing a 48-year-old character. It happens all the time. Lowe looks young for his age - he can pull it off.
I don’t know anything about 911, so I can’t speculate on it, but this idea doesn’t sound like it would be the case. Right off the bat, are the powers that be really going to let Rob Lowe, the actor, screw with the age of the character? Was there really no show-related reason why his character would have to be a teen in the 80s?
Keep in mind, Rob Lowe was, at least up until Parks and Rec, arguably best known for his work in the 80’s, being part of The Brat Pack and starring in About Last Night and St Elmo’s Fire, amongst others. In the 90’s he played (IIRC) one of the ‘bad guys’ in Wayne’s World. In that role, at least in part, compared to Wayne and Garth’s he was the ‘grown up’.
A big reason for hiring actors that are 5-10 years older than their characters should be when casting roles for high school characters is not just that their work ethic is usually a bit better and their schedules are easier to work around, but because, in show that’s filled with dozens or hundreds of high-school aged background actors/extras, they physically stand out. It’s easier for everyone from the writer to the director to the viewers at home when your eyes go right to the main cast instead of them blending in with all the other people in the shot.
The backstory for his character is that he was a firefighter at the towers on 9/11, so presumably his character was about twenty years younger then and being 48 now fits.
Yeah, that does make sense - they want the character to be a bit further away from retirement age, and firefighters often retire in their late 50s. I withdraw my complaint - there’s good reason to have the character notably younger than the actor.
P.S. Funny thing, though. In a previous episode the character was offended because he thought someone was comparing him in age to a character played by Dan Castellaneta, who is considerably older than the character, but not that much older than the actor.
I think early on he was shown to be very much into self-care, using various skin care products. So that and the episode you mentioned may be playing on Rob Lowe’s vanity.
Having never watched the West Wing, I can’t tell you how often someone says almost that exact same thing to me. I’m always surprised at how many have been on that show at one point or another. Back when Psych was on, I used to talk about it…probably more than other people wanted to hear about it. At one point I mentioned Dule Hill and suddenly people are telling me they already know him from West Wing.
FWIW, vanity was a big part of his Parks and Rec character as well (though, if you look deeper, the vanity was a bit of a crutch to hide, what appeared to me, some type of depression or other mental issue(s)).
Whether that’s a coincidence or his own personality/life experiences shaping his roles, I have no idea.
How about when they use younger actresses to play older characters? IIRC the movie Mean Girls had both, with a high school junior being played by 26-year-old Rachel McAdams while 33-year-old Amy Poehler played her mom. Don’t tell me that’s because of laws limiting the hours women in their 40s and 50s can work.
Amy Poehler’s age doesn’t seem that far off. If Rachel McAdams is meant to be, for example, 16 years old (as I was) as a junior, Amy being 33 would have made her about 17 when she gave birth. Maybe pad a year or two since the actress and character don’t have to be the exact same age, and couple that with her tying to be the ‘cool mom’ and I don’t have a problem with a 32-35 year old having kid that’s a junior in high school. She’d have been a young mom, but it’s not like they screwed up the numbers and she would have been 12.
But, honestly, it was probably the Tina Fey connection. I’d guess if she wasn’t the mom, she would have still been in the role somewhere. Maybe swapping with Tina.
There’s at least one movie where a guy in his 50s played a teenager. It was prior to color film, so you could get away with more.
The name of the film escapes me though, so you’ll have to take my word for now.
Do you always know how exactly how old a character (or an actor!!!) is? Also, any desired wrinkles can be added or removed via real and/or digital makeup magic. E.g. Chaim Topol starred as a 60-something-year-old man in Sallah Shabati and Fiddler on the Roof when he was 29 years old.
What I am getting at is, there may be many casting considerations, but any calculations based on the actor’s age (if you even know it) are ridiculously invalid.
Roger Moore was 57 in A View To A Kill. He said he retired from the Bond franchise because it was just starting to look too creepy for a man his age to playing a notorious womanizer shown with women in their 20’s.
Possibly related: It’s easier to get rid of wrinkles to make an older actor look younger than it is to add them to make a younger actor look older. Removing them requires filling them in. However, adding them requires adding bulk (ie prosthetics) to their face so the make-up department can set the wrinkles into the ‘skin’.
Going the other way, .Stockard Channing was 33 when she played the high-school Rizzo in Grease. Julie Andrews was 30 when she played (age 22) Maria in The Sound of Music. And Mary Martin was in her forties when she played the role on Broadway.