Right now, the inclination is to cast older actors as teenagers. This has some obvious disadvantages, such as suspension of disbelief, setting unreasonable body expectations in actual teenage viewers, and actual changing of work context (e.g. The Hunger Games movies would have a very different feel to them if the cast were actually fifteen years old, as in the books).
On the other hand, casting age-exactly has its disadvantages too. Child actors have a very long history of being exploited, objectified, and abused by everyone from producers to crew to fans to their own parents. The studios have to account for and set up education. Natural aging makes movie sequels that take place within a short amount of in-story time difficult. It’s harder to find top notch talent.
So in general, what do you think is the best way to go overall, for the project and for the well-being of those who make and consume it?
Cast someone who looks the age they’re portraying. Slightly older than school age can still often look believably school age - it’s not hard. Most high school-based stuff I’ve seen that was made in the last fifteen years or so has cast people that could pass for the age they were playing.
Though the trope about child actors is not actually that true. It’s especially true for teen actors - most of them turn out pretty well. We do need children to be able to act, unless we write out any roles that can’t be played by an adult, so what has to be done is really strict rules about how the kids are looked after, on and off set.
It does seem to have got a lot better this century, even while adults are still being subjected to unwanted advances for roles.
One of my favorite anime took place over three years (Japanese high school is three years) and so the characters could have realistically “grown up”. Only one character actually changed. (One had skipped many years and started at age 12. She looked 12 at the end of the show. I guess the artist got lazy.) Other than crazy dream sequences, the rest of the show was realistic. Real-life teenage actors grow, and if one year of school takes several years in real life (or the opposite!) the actors will quickly stop looking the part.
Some teen movies couldn’t have teen actors for legal reasons.
Everyone who has gone from high school to college knows of the huge difference between the two. High schoolers are still developing. College seniors have matured and their bodies pretty much are at a plateau. That works for mental development as well.
Older actors just physically walk, talk, move, and think differently from high schoolers. Look at a Disney or Nickelodeon show with real teens versus a network show or movie with adults playing teens. They’re like two different worlds.
Using non-age appropriate actors sets up expectations in the audience that work the same way as casting thin, beautiful women as ordinary people. Over time it becomes the standard that society wants everyday people to conform to. That’s bad in all sorts of ways.
I don’t care if they cast 20-somethings as teenagers. In addition to the logistic and ethical problems of working with child actors, very few child actors are very good at acting, so I don’t see this changing.
Even if the show is being produced in real time (say, seasons produced one per year, with each season covering a year in the fictional universe), actors aging can be problematic. If you have a 14 year old who grows eight inches between the first and second season and drops two octaves in voice, that’s going to be jarring. It’s realistic (after all, the actor is a real person that it’s happening to), but it’ll still cause a disconnect with the audience. Especially if you already have scripts, or source material that you’re adapting, that doesn’t make any mention of those changes (or worse, makes mention of their lack). And when you’re casting a real teenager, you have no idea what their growth spurts or voice change or whatever will be like.
The makers of the Harry Potter movies took a gamble, and it worked. But it might not have.
I remember when the first movie came out one of the adult actors (probably Rickman) was on a talk show, and he said that only him and a couple other of the adults were signed on for all 7 movies. They just assumed the kids would have to be recasted once or twice with how long it would take to make all the movies.
I’d still argue that casting actual-age people is best. Yes, it can lead to trouble, but IMHO, casting 25-year olds as 15-year olds is never convincing. I can’t think of any twenty+ year old who ever did a believable job passing themselves off as someone a decade younger (yes, subjective opinion, but I can’t think of a single one.) It’s not just appearance; you can tell that, psychologically, the actor is in his/her 20s. They do not seem teen-ish at all.
I can’t agree with that. As a former secondary school teacher and parent of a teenager, I’d say that teenagers vary widely in how old they present. I’ve known 11-year-olds that look 19, and 19-olds that look 11 - and it’s nothing to do with make up or clothing. You can have one school class or group of friends where their physical appearance makes them look several years apart.
Emotionally they’re all still kids, and should be treated according to their age, but they don’t necessarily look it.
Most teen actors live lives where they’re more responsible than other teenagers too, so that’s probably always going to be a problem.
I think Buffy did well with this. The actors are all older than what they portray, but not that much older (Faith was actually her own age, which is probably extra unusual for that sort of role). Just old enough that they can make their own decisions, not so old that they look like they could be their own parents.
I thought that Lolita (1997) was particularly badly cast. An older girl playing a younger girl being characterized as an older girl, and even older body double … How did they ever think that showing a 13 yr character as physically 15 and 18 was going to make the movie less offensive to people who cared?
Lolita was 12 years old, to emphasize the reality that she was pre-pubescent and that Humbert Humbert was physically disgusted by pubescent women. There was almost literally no point to the novel if this wasn’t true. Neither movie should ever have been made.
It depends on what they are doing with the character. Can you imagine how creepy The Beverly Hillbillies would have been if Ellie and Jethro had been played by actual teenagers?
I’d say it’s far more about mental development. Some of us physically matured on the early side; I was my full adult 6’1" and about 200 lbs as a high school sophomore. I filled out and got bigger from there through weightlifting, etc… but I didn’t do any more growing- my shoe size, sleeve length and inseam haven’t changed since. (the rest has, but only because I got fatter).
But there was a LOT of mental growing up to do between 15 and 18, and between there and college graduation.
Yeah, this is especially noticeable if you’re actually a teenager and they’ve cast some twenty-something to play a part in the movie - the thought “nobody looks like THAT at my school!” comes to mind. I recall having that distinct thought when I saw “Sixteen Candles”- the actress who played Jake’s girlfriend (Haviland Morris) was 24 when she played that role. And looked it. Real sixteen year olds looked more like Molly Ringwald or Anthony Michael Hall, who were actually 16.
Sure, there are always a couple of older-looking physical specimens in a high school. I knew a swimmer who was 6’5" and built like a Greek god. He stood out from the rest of my class, though.
The worst examples are the sexualized ones. Gossip Girl takes place in a prep school, i.e. high school. The reboot has a plot mostly involving freshmen. They look like this. Ultra-rich New York kids will be more sophisticated than small town teens, but that’s ridiculous.
Mara Wilson wrote “7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy (An Insider’s Perspective)” for Cracked.com back in 2013 that’s worth a read. If you don’t remember Wilson, she was a child actor known for Mrs. Doubtfire, Matilda, and Miracle on 34th Street (1994 version). Wilson had a generally positive experience but does recall the time when she was 7 years old and a reporter asked her what she thought of Hugh Grant’s recent arrest for solicitation.