Ming Na turned fifty last year.
I’m watching Graham Norton on BBC America. He said he’s 51. Wow, he looks closer to a decade younger to me.
He was 24 when I first knew about him. I would’ve thought older, but back then everybody was older to me. I’m still more surprised of his success and that he’s an Academy Award winning actor, when I know him best as being in drag and doing ducklips.
I suppose I will add Steve Martin. He’s 68, that’s not terribly surprising, but since his hair has been silver forever it made him look older while paradoxically seeming to never age.
I think I actually stopped liking Demetri Martin when I learned his age. My opinion of him went from “He’s quite talented” to “No wonder he seemed talented; he has 20 years of experience at acting 20.”
Foxx doesn’t seem younger to me. It’s probably because I can remember back when he was doing In Living Color in the early nineties so I’ve been seeing him for twenty years.
Jennifer Beals is another actress who looks younger than her real age (she’s 50). When she was on The Chicago Code some people were saying she was too young to play a Police Commissioner. But the actual head of the Chicago Police Department at the time was only 51. (And other people said that Beals, a Chicago native, wasn’t doing the accent right.)
I think that’s why I’m not shocked at the previously mentioned Chris Hardwick’s age. I was a fan of his back when I was in high school/college, and knew then he was older than that.
Biggest shocker for me is an actor named Steven Anthony Lawrence. Here’s his picture. He’s 23.
Paolo Nuttini sings like an aged black guy who’s seen some hard times. His music, that he writes, is so good it seems like you’ve always heard it. I first saw him live in 2006, but on a huge stage, and he was barely visible, and I was with friends and just dancing around and not looking at the stage or the screens. He doesn’t appear much in public as a celeb-type person, so I never saw his face, and he’s been around for a while.
He’s 24. Twenty-fucking-four.
Actors I was really surprised to learn are over 21:
Jack Gleeson (Joffrey) and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Jojen) of Game of Thrones
Sarah Hyland (Haley) of Modern Family
Hyland looks so young that while she’s perfectly believable as the irresponsible teenager on her sitcom I couldn’t believe her at all as Blanche Barrow in the recent Bonnie and Clyde miniseries.
That’s so weird about Wilford Brimley. What must all those other actors in Cocoon, who were well into their seventies, have thought about their not-yet-50 costar?
One who amazed me in the opposite way was Brian Benben, when I saw him pop up on a show my wife watched (Private Practice). He looked like he had spent two decades hermetically sealed or something. My wife is too young to remember Dream On, so I blew her mind by pointing out that he graduated high school when her parents were still in middle school.
Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gormet, died some years ago at 65. I thought he was 65 twenty years prior to that!
Character actor William Hickey died some years ago at 69. I would have thought he was in his 70s twenty years earlier.
THIS, plus Charisma Carpenter - I think she was either late 20’s or early 30’s when she started.
SlackerInc writes:
> That’s so weird about Wilford Brimley. What must all those other actors in Cocoon,
> who were well into their seventies, have thought about their not-yet-50 costar?
I decided to look all these ages and the release date up.
Cocoon was released on June 21, 1985.
Wilford Brimley was born on September 27, 1934 and so was 50.
Don Ameche was born on May 31, 1908 and so was 77.
Hume Cronyn was born on July 18, 1911 and so was 73.
Jack Gifford was born on July 25, 1908 and so was 76.
Jessica Tandy was born on June 7, 1909 and so was 76.
Gwen Verdon was born on January 13, 1925 and so was 60.
Maureen Stapledon was born on June 21, 1925 and so was 60.
Herta Ware was born on June 19, 1917 and so 68.
And so he was 50 and some of the others were only in their sixties. I suspect that the reason that Brimley looked fifteen years older than his real age at the time of that movie is that he was heavily tanned from his early careers as a ranch hand, wrangler, blacksmith, and stunt man (and tanning really does make you look older), from the fact that he was heavy-set in comparison to his co-stars (since anyone who spends most of their life as a Hollywood actor knows that you have to stay in good physical shape to get good roles), and the fact that he went bald and gray early (and anyone in Hollywood knows that you get a wig and dye your hair if you want good roles). In some sense, Brimley looked more like an average person of his age in 1985, not like an actor who’d pushed himself all his life to continue to look young.
Back in the 60s when I was just a kid and very big into movies I saw somewhere that Paul Newman was 40. He was at the height of his big screen popularity then, and I would have guessed he was about 30. Well, 30 was one thing, but 40 seemed old for a leading man. That was ridiculous of course, but when you’re 10 or 12, you have ridiculous opinions.
Except I was talking about six years ago or so!
Really? She sounds exactly like an artsy teenager to me.
I find it more surprising that a New Zealander based a song off of baseball.
I was a little surprised when a story about Chelsea Clinton’s current pregnancy mentioned she was 34.
Where does the time go?
Yeah, she’s been looking like she’s been forty for about a decade now, so I guess she’s another one whose age is finally catching up to her looks.
In the opposite direction, Jim Parson’s doesn’t really look 41. Which is why he can successfully play someone about 10 years younger.
I saw Jamie Foxx doing stand up before In Living Color in LA. He was decent enough, but he looked like a teenager at the time.