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{{trope}}
[[Image:LaBomba Especial RegresoAClases.jpg|thumb|Your typical teen drama casting choices.]]
{{quote|''"This is just like ''[[The OC]]'', [[Dissimile|except without 25-year-old teenagers and 35-year-old parents.]]"''
|'''Jack''', ''[[Will and Grace]]''}}
High school students in television look nothing like high school students in real life ([[Older Than They Look|well, not always]]), for one good reason: they're played by actors who are upwards of ten-to-fifteen years older. This dates back to the earliest days of Hollywood, if not further, making it [[Older Than Television]].
Despite this trope being a prime source for ridicule, mockery, and parody, there are actually a lot of
# Labor laws and regulations are probably the biggest reason. They apply to acting just as they do any other profession. There are a whole string of laws that child actors are subject to, including; (in the UK and the USA) education requirements and night shoot and work hours restrictions. These aren't the ideal condition when trying to meet the deadlines for finishing a film or a TV season.
# The vast majority of professional actors are twenty and up anyway, so if you hold an audition for a teen role, nine out of ten of the actors you see will be an inappropriate age, and they'll be the ones with good CVs.
# The pressures of stardom are harder for a teen actor to handle than a young adult. An actor in his or her twenties is less likely to leave a show after one season (or film series after one entry) to focus on his or her education than an actual teenager is.
# It's easier to see the difference between a teen and a young adult if you are a teen or young adult. Casting directors are often middle-aged or older; to them a 16-year-old ''doesn't'' look noticeably younger than a 21-year-old.
# Puberty tends to be extremely fickle; a cute 14-year
# [[Paedo Hunt|Obscenity and child porn laws.]] In the US, it's generally illegal to do anything that even simulates sex on film<ref>And in many countries, even in animation.</ref> unless everyone involved is [[Totally Eighteen|18 or older]]. Therefore, having older actors allows the filmmakers to depict various acts on camera that would get them thrown in jail if the actors were underage.
# Related to the above, this allows for [[Fan Service]], which is legal as long as it's non-nude.
# Most successful teen
# [[Stage Mom|Stage parents]] can be a pain in the ass for filmmakers, butting in and [[Wag the Director|trying to dictate]] various parts of the production.
This ought to be horribly distracting, but by and large, television audiences have learned to manage. It can sometimes result in a paradoxical effect: teens that look more like actual teens (either with real teenage actors or in animation) are described as looking "too young" (see [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]). Conversely, actors in their early-to-mid-twenties, especially those who make their name in these kinds of shows, often have difficulty being taken seriously playing characters their own age.
This happens far most often when dealing with teenage characters in the range of
Very specific actors can pull it off, usually attributing it to the character being [[Older Than They Look]]. In other cases, some stories work with this because a key plot point may be the character does not actually look their age, or because the actor looks younger (for example many do not realize Sissy Spacek was not actually a teen in ''[[Carrie]]''). But with no such luck Hollywood will get by with appropriate clothing, [[Girlish Pigtails|hairstyles]], makeup and mannerisms.
Named for ''[[
The below ages are generally at the time the movie was released or the first episode aired; the actors are of course younger during filming. Simply put, a 20-year
Note that many works can end up on both the examples and exceptions due to either mixing casts or the aging of cast members over a series. Be sure to specify which performers fit the examples and which fit the exceptions.
And because voice acting has nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with vocal performance, only notable aversions should be mentioned in that regard (it would be like complaining they didn't get an actual alien to voice an alien). Likewise, this is intended primarily towards adults playing teenagers and not about simple age discrepancies. There's a good explanation for why this may be done for voice acting, too - having actual children to voice actual child characters is sometimes complicated because kids age, have their own lives ahead of them, enter puberty (and voices change) etc. This is also part of why we have [[Cross
This trope is less noticeable with females as it is with males as females tend to fully mature physically at an earlier age by 14 or 15. Where as Males tend to not full mature until their late teens. Which makes a Male actor in his 20's playing a 15 year old less believable than it is with a female of the same age playing a 15 year old.
And then there's the added wrinkle of using computer enhancement to make a character look younger; actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were de-aged in 2006's ''X-Men: The Last Stand'' and Montréal-based visual effects firm Rodeo FX used the technique for the 2011 film ''Le Bonheur des Autres''.
Compare [[Age Lift]], [[Age-Inappropriate Dress]], [[Hollywood Old]] and [[Playing Hamlet]]. Contrast [[Playing Gertrude]] and [[Not Allowed to Grow Up]]. See also [[Artistic Age]] for an intentional drawn equivalent. [[Cross-Dressing Voices]] is more-or-less the [[Animation Tropes|animated version]] of this trope, as partially explained above.
{{examples}}
== Straight ==
=== Fan Works ===
* Although there's generally no actual casting involved, many ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfics involve describing the characters (both existing and new) in terms that don't fit with eleven to seventeen years old. Sometimes there actually ''is'' casting, when the author creates banners or pictures for the cast, and generally uses models or actresses in their young 20s.
** A notable example would have to be ''[[The Girl Who Lived]]'', which references pictures of well-endowed porn actresses in their late 20s as pictures of the main cast all the way back when they were [[Squick|11]].
* In the author's notes of ''[[My Immortal]]'', Tara Gilesbie suggested that [[My Chemical Romance|Gerard Way]] (!) should play [[Draco in Leather Pants|Draco Malfoy]] in the then-next ''[[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter]]'' film.
=== Film ===
* Inverted in ''[[Click]]'' where 19 year old Katie Cassidy plays the 27 year old version of Adam Sander's daughter
* Inverted in ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Teen idol [[
* In the original 1958 version of ''[[
* Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Both were born in the early 1940s, and both starred in a series of Beach Movies in the late 1960s with vague plots about how "school is out, so let's go to the beach."
* Fabiano Anthony Forte often played a restless teenager with a penchant for singing.
* ''[[Mr.
* All of the "kids" from ''[[
* The ''[[
* ''Female Trouble'' - Mink Stole, in her late 20s, plays a 14-year
* In ''[[Dirty Dancing]]'' Frances is 17 years old; Jennifer Grey, who played her, was 27 but looked suitably young. Johnny is 25 years old, and played by 35 yr old [[Patrick Swayze]], who unfortunately looked his age, making it look a bit squicky.
* [[
* Ralph Macchio was in his early twenties when he first played the 15-year
* An (in)famous movie example: 33-year
* In ''Rock 'n' Roll High School'', all the "teen" actors are, at the youngest, in their mid twenties. The main character, Riff, was played by 29-year
* In the 1954 ''[[
* In ''[[Peggy Sue Got Married]]'' 32-year
* 16-year
* The movie version of ''[[The Wiz]]'' has 33-year
* [[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
** Leslie Howard, at 43, played Romeo in a 1936 version and Juliet was played by 34-year
** At the time of filming of the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were 15 and 17 respectively. This was considered a radical innovation at the time, and much of the film's success was due the stars' very believable youthful passion. Ironically Olivia Hussey wasn't allowed to attend the debut of the film because the film had nudity and she was too young. It was ''her own'' nudity that she was prevented from seeing.
** In the 1996 movie, ''[[William
* Some of the stars of ''[[
* In the 1974 Werner Herzog film ''Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle'' (also known as ''The enigma of Kaspar Hauser''), the lead role of about-16-year
* ''[[Harry Potter (
** A convoluted example involves Tom Riddle, who [[Timeshifted Actor|appears as a 16-year
** ''[[
* [[Michael J. Fox]] played the teen-aged Marty McFly of the ''[[Back to
* Parodied in ''[[
* Also done in the similar spoof ''[[
* ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'':
** The BBC adaptation from 1995 included Julia Sawalha (then in her late twenties) as 15-year
** The 1940 adaptation plays this trope straight. 36-year -olds [[Laurence Olivier]] and [[Greer Garson]] played 28-year
* Jake Gyllenhaal was 23 when he was cast as a teenager in the 2004 movie ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]''.
* Most of the actors in ''[[
* Graham Phillips (age 14) plays the titular [[
* ''Kidulthood'' stars Noel Clarke, who was 29 when playing the 18-year
* ''[[Clueless]]'':
** Stacey Dash was 28 portraying a 16-year
** The rest of the teen cast had an average age of 21, but 19-year
* In [[The Film of the Book]] of ''[[The World According To Garp]]'', Garp is played from age 15 and up by then-30-year
* [[David Lynch]] loves this trope.
** ''[[Twin Peaks]], [[The Movie|Fire Walk with Me]]'' [[Prequel|takes place days before the TV show]] and all the 20-something actors (mentioned in the TV section) are a few years older, with some flashbacks taking place ''years'' before the TV show, and Sheryl Lee playing 15. There were some additions to the movie that weren't in the TV show, such as 24-year
** In ''[[Wild
** In ''[[
* ''[[Mean Girls]]'' had 25-year
* ''[[Carrie]]'':
** The eponymous character was a high school senior and portrayed by a 26-year
** [[Angela Bettis]] was 29 when she portrayed Carrie in the remake.
* Four years later, Spacek played Loretta Lynn in ''Coal Miner's Daughter''
* Parodied in ''[[Walk Hard]]'', where the 14-year
* In Rian Johnson's ''Brick'', Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Emilie de Ravin, and [[Meagan Good]] were twenty-two years old during production, playing high school students, and Brian J. White was twenty-eight.
* In Gregg Araki's ''[[Mysterious Skin]]'', 23-year
* [[Tim Roth]] played a 19-year
* In ''City of Ember'' one of the two 12-year
* In the film version of [[
* The 1996 film version of ''[[The Birdcage]]'' features ''[[
* The 1936 Yiddish musical ''Yidl Mitn Fidl'' (''Yidl With His Fiddle'') stars the Yiddish stage icon Molly Picon, who was about 37, as a teenage girl (who poses as a boy, then falls in love).
* Parminder Nagra was 26 when she played 18-year
* George Mather was 42 when he portrayed 22-year
* Almost every [[Jane Eyre (
* In the 1920 silent film ''Pollyanna'', 27-year
** Pickford was famous during much of her career for playing child characters: cf. ''The Poor Little Rich Girl'', ''Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm'', ''Through the Back Door'', and ''[[Little Lord Fauntleroy]]'' (in which she played a 10-year
** Famous for pulling it off, too. In ''Sparrows,'' she is 34, but she plays a young teenager. Her co-stars for most of the film are children ranging from about age six to age 10, so if she were obviously much older, it would show up in contrast to the real children, but it doesn't.
* The best example has to be ''[[Hating Alison Ashley]]'', which centers around a year 9 (though it was grade six in the book) camping trip. The actors in the movie version were 20 and 21 at the time of its release.
* ''[[Yentl]]'', with a 40-year
** Mandy Patinkin was 30; his character Avigdor's age is never given, but he's young enough to be eagerly awaiting his wedding night.
* In the 1962 film ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'', [[Angela Lansbury]] plays the mother of Laurence Harvey's character, despite being only two years older than Harvey; both actors were in their mid-30s when the film was made.
* The satirical 1966 film ''Lord Love a Duck'' has high-schoolers played by 23-year
* In the first ''[[Spider-Man (
** [[Andrew Garfield]], who portrays the character in [[The Amazing Spider-Man
* ''[[
* Richard Wilson was 21 when he played Mikey in ''[[The Proposition]]'', who is implied to be about 14.
* [[Matthew Broderick]] gets mentioned further down in Theater, but ''[[Ferris
* The 1959 film ''[[Teenagers
* Another really bad example comes from the rather poor film adaptation of the novel ''[[Flowers in
* ''[[
** 37-year
* Played With in ''[[Matchstick Men]]'', an older actress playing a young girl... {{spoiler|OR IS SHE!?}}
** Alison Lohman also played a teenager girl in ''Flicka'' when she was 25.
* [[Malcolm McDowell]] was 27 when he played Alex in ''[[A Clockwork Orange (
* Most of the high school freshman class in ''[[Freedom Writers]]'' were played by actors ridiculously too old to be playing 14-year
* In the 2007 movie ''The Namesake'', based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri, Kal Penn is Gogol/Nikhil in high school (as well as throughout his life). Kal Penn is 32, and he is only 7 years younger than the actress playing his mother (Tabu). Also, Moushumi Mazumdar is played by Zuleikha Robinson when Moushumi is in high school and in her 30s, but Robinson seems to pull it off better.
* Played with in ''Suspiria'': For his horror classic, Dario Argento wanted to have the students of the girls' boarding school to be prepubescent to increase the emotional impact and play into the dark fairy tale theme. His producers nixed the idea because of the difficulties of hiring and working with so many child actors on such a project. Argento compensated by having all the students (played by actresses in their 20s) behave immaturely and building sets that made them look small.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Teenage Caveman]]''. Robert Vaughn was only 26 when playing the titular character, but looked older due to the brylcreem (which somehow survived the apocalypse).
* Many of the actors in ''[[Kids]]'', including [[Chloe Sevigny]], were 18 and older (but really did look and act like young teens).
* The 1983 film version of SE Hinton's ''The Outsiders'' cast a then 31-year
* In ''[[The Aviator]]'', Gwen Stefani plays [[Jean Harlow]], who was 19 at the time the film shows her; Gwen was 34 during filming, five years older than Jean when she passed away.
* In ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'' 16-year
* Richard Linklater's ''[[Dazed and Confused]]'' sometimes plays it straight: Christine Harnos and Sasha Jenson portrayed incoming high school seniors despite being older than age-appropriate Matthew McConaughey, who played a twenty-something graduate.
* 19-year
* ''[[
* [[Danielle Harris]] was 29 when she portrayed the 17-year
** In ''Halloween 4,'' Rachel was played by 25
** 14-year
* [[Jamie Lee Curtis]] was 22 when she did ''[[
** The first sequel is worse, especially the bald teen at the beginning. There's also an [[The OC|O.C]] type situation with Vicki and her mom. They couldn't be more than 10 years apart in age with Vicki in her late 20s and the mom in her early 30s, only one's dressed like a prudish librarian school marm cliche, and one has really awesome clothes and really radical crimped hair. The other two sequels feature teens that are around the age of 25.
** [[The Remake]] features teens that range from 21 (Brittany Snow) and 22 (Jessica Stroup) to 29 (Scott Porter) and 30 (Dana Davis)
* The four actors who played the supposedly high-school aged Juan Rico, Dizzy Flores, Carmen Ibanez, and Carl Jenkins in ''[[Starship Troopers (
* In the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (
* Harold and Kumar in ''[[Harold
* Audie Murphy played himself from his late teens to early twenties in ''To Hell and Back'', made ten years later. It wasn't too bad, as he remained quite young-looking as well as short.
* The first film in the ''[[Scream (
** The first sequel continues this with Elise Neal as a college student, playing a contemporary of Neve Campbell at the age of 31. The third sequel has a rare aversion with [[Emma Roberts]] (who though 20 by the time of its release was 19 during filming), although played straight with [[Hayden Panettiere]] (who celebrated her 21st birthday during filming - though she averts this trope elsewhere on this page) and the rest of the cast.
* ''Disco Pigs'' brought us [[Cillian Murphy]], then 24, playing a 16-year
* In ''[[Never Been Kissed]]''. [[Drew Barrymore]] plays a 25-year
** Averted with at least two of her fellow students - [[Leelee Sobieski]] and [[Jessica Alba]] were 15 and 17 respectively when the film was made.
* In ''[[Taken (
* Sometimes the whole point of a character is that it is a child being played by an adult:
** Pee-wee Herman is an ambiguous man-child who is always referred to as a "boy" but is played by the obviously adult Paul Reubens. In the live ''Pee-wee Herman Show'' performed with the Groundlings, as well as ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure'', Pee-wee has a number of friends who are also adults playing children.
** In ''Clifford'', the 43-year
*** Earlier on [[SCTV]], Short played a TV child star whose show ran on for decades, necessitating oversized props and playing against huge football players.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Better Off Dead]]'' when Charles de Mar (played by then-32-year
* In ''[[Sin City]]'' 24 year old [[Jessica Alba]] (who otherwise generally avoids this trope) played 19 year old Nancy Callahan.
* In the film adaptation of ''[[My Fair Lady]]'', [[Audrey Hepburn]] was 34-years old while playing the 21-year
* In ''[[For Your Eyes Only (
* Lampshaded in ''What's New, Pussycat?'' as flashbacks depict Peter O'Toole's pivotal experiences with women in grade school, high school, and college, all with O'Toole in character (his twelve year old self in school uniform looking very Angus Young).
* For ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]: [[Prince Caspian]]'', 25-year
** In ''[[The Voyage of the Dawn Treader|Dawn Treader]]'', Eustace is supposed to be 10. He's played by 17-year
* ''Bad Day at Black Rock'' is one of the most egregious examples ever: 55-year
* In the film ''[[Unfaithful]]'', while a specific age is not given, we are led to believe that Oliver Martinez' character is much younger than Diane Lane (37 at the time of filming). Her husband is shocked at how young he is when he encounters him, and later blasts his cheating wife--"you threw our life away for some f--king KID!". However, Martinez is only a year younger than Lane.
* ''Basketball Diaries'' - 21-year
* ''Total Eclipse'' - 21-year
* ''Marvin's Room'' - 22-year
* In ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'', 27-year
* In ''[[
* Most live-action adaptations of ''[[
** The 2010 [[Tim Burton]] [[Alice in Wonderland (
** Funnily enough, the [[Disney Animated Canon]] [[Alice in Wonderland (Disney film)|version]] used a child voice actress (12-year
* This trope is ''constantly'' invoked in porno films: Any actress that qualifies as flat chested is usually cast as a "teenager", even if they've looked like they've popped a couple of kids or have been traveling the strip club circuit for a bit too long. Infamous director Max Hardcore made a cottage industry of hiring short/flat chested actresses, dressing them in toddler clothes, and filming the scenes as if he were making some sort of underground child porn video.
* Jackson Rathbone age 25 plays 15-year
* In the 1996 film ''[[
* Justin Long has made a career of playing almost exclusively characters a good 10+ years younger than he is. He can make it work though, since he has a rather youthful face.
* In perhaps one of the most extreme examples of this trope, ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'' cast 22-year
* The [[Carry On]] Film 'Carry On Camping' featured a school girl played by the 32 year old Barbara Windsor.
* Used distractingly in ''Running With Scissors'', in which the audience is expected to believe that 20-year
* In ''[[
* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings (
* ''[[A Beautiful Mind]]'': [[Russell Crowe]] was in his late 30s while playing the main character. The movie begins as he enters Princeton University, which the real John Nash did when he was 20 years old.
* Sally Ann Howes was in her mid-30s when she played the 20-something Truly Scrumptious in ''[[Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]]''. Years later, she would describe herself as having been "the world's oldest virgin".
* ''[[Scott Pilgrim
* 20-year
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Push (
* [[Kevin Bacon]] was 25 when he played teenager Ren McCormack in ''[[
** Most of the other teen actors are in their mid to late twenties as well. However, [[Sarah Jessica Parker]], who was 19 at the time is more believable as a high school senior than the others. Chris Penn was also around eighteen at the time.
** The remake looks set to play this trope straight. The "teens" are all comfortably in their twenties, with Ren being played by a 26 year old.
* In ''Catch That Kid'', Corbin Bleu, Max Thieriot, and [[Kristen Stewart]] play 12-year
* The 1981 Italian zombie flick ''Le Notti del terrore'' (US title: ''[[
* 21-year
* [[Freaks
* [[
* ''[[
* In the ''[[
* ''[[
* ''Nowhere (1996)'' by Gregg Araki - [[Mena Suvari]] and Joshua Gibran Mayweather were both teens, but the rest were between 20 and 40 years old.
* ''[[Friday the
* ''[[Mirror Mask]]'' - 15-year
* In ''[[Girl
* A particularly ironic example is ''[[
* [[Selma Blair]] was subject to this a lot.
** ''[[
** ''Debutante'' - 26-year
** ''Girl (1998)'' - 26-year
** ''[[Cruel Intentions]]'' - All of the actors are well out of their teens, especially [[Selma Blair]] at age 27 who is supposedly younger than the other characters and has [[Never Been Kissed]].
** ''[[Legally Blonde (
** For more, see the Television section.
* ''Earth Angel (1991)'' was a movie about a prom queen who dies in the 1960s and then has to do a good deed 30 years later. It was seemingly influenced by movies such as ''[[Back to
* In ''[[Remember the Titans]]'', most of the actors playing the 16-18 year old high school football players were well into their twenties, and Wood Harris was 31, a year older than the actress who played the wife of [[Denzel Washington]]. However, [[Ryan Gosling]] as one of the players was about 19 and [[Kate Bosworth]] as the girlfriend of one of the players was 17.
* ''[[Natural Born Killers]]'' - 21-year
* ''The Other Sister'' - 26-year
* ''[[A Nightmare
** 16-year
** There are three actors under the age of 20 in any of the sequels. The actors are usually between 21 and 24. The most egregious example would be Lezlie Deane, playing Tracy in Freddy's Dead at age 27. The youngest teen in the remake was 23.
* ''[[
** Christine Elise was 25 in ''Child's Play 2''.
** Katherine Heigl's friends in ''Bride of Chucky'', in their late 20s.
* In ''[[Texas Chainsaw The Next Generation]]'', [[
* ''The Burning Bed'' covers a specific period in Francine Hughes's life from age 15 to age 29. You would think that they would cast someone around the age of 22, someone halfway between 15 and 29. Instead, they cast 37 year old Farrah Fawcett.
* ''Varsity Blues'' starring the guy from ''[[
* ''Devil in the Flesh'' - 25-year
* ''Dean Koontz's Phantoms'' - 25-year
* ''[[
* The ''[[
* ''Drive Me Crazy:'' 23-year
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (
* ''[[A Cinderella Story]]'':
** While averted with [[
** In ''[[Another Cinderella Story]]'', [[
*** Played very straight ''A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song'', with 21-year
* In ''[[
* ''[[Fired Up]]:'' has 23 year old Sarah Roemer, 27 year old Nicholas d'Agosto and 30 year old Eric Christian Olsen playing high school cheerleaders.
* ''[[True Grit]]'' 1969 has 21 year old Kim Darby playing 14 year old Mattie Ross.
* Randy Quaid was 23 when ''The Last Detail'' was made. It is never specifically stated how old his character is, but he isn't old enough to drink.
* ''[[Wild Things]]'' from 1998, 25-year
* ''[[Drop Dead Gorgeous (
* ''[[
* In 1983, 21-year
* [[Alexis Bledel]] was 21 years old when she played 15-year
* For ''[[The Hunger Games (
** See also Leven Rambin (Glimmer), who's only a few months older than Jennifer Lawrence.
** To top it off, Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Career Tribute Clove, was 14 when they shot the film. Peeta mentions that Careers are always 18. So that means that you have an actress six years younger than her costar playing a character 2 years older than her costar. (Jacqueline Emerson, as Foxface, is also more age-appropriate (she was 16 during production).
* In Peter Bogdanovich's ''Mask'' (no, not that [[The Mask (
* ''[[
* Both [[Inverted Trope]] and played straight in ''[[A Christmas Carol|Scrooge]]'', where both the [[Hollywood Old|elder]] Scrooge and his young self were played by Albert Finney, then in his early 30's.
* The actors in ''[[Three O
* ''Deux''. This French film stars Isabelle Huppert as twin sisters in an extremely confusing storyline that jumps crazily backwards and forwards in time and space, with no attempt to make Huppert look appropriately older or younger. There are a couple of lengthy sequences in which she appears as a schoolgirl, despite being in her late forties. In addition her/their mother, played by Bulle Ogier, is seen in flashback as a young heavily pregnant woman despite being in her sixties.
* ''Take Me Home Tonight'' is about a group of characters in their early twenties but much of the cast is ten years (or more) older. [[Anna Faris]] and Dan Fogler in particular were both 34 playing fresh university graduates. The difference in appearance between them and those characters who ''are'' played by actors in their early/mid twenties is quite jarring.
* ''[[I Love You, Beth Cooper]]'' was filmed the year [[Hayden Panettiere]], as the titular high school cheerleader, turned 19. So far so good. Unfortunately Paul Rust, the "I" in the title, was almost 30...
** The end credits feature high school pictures of the main cast and the above-the-line crew; Panettiere is just about the only one of the former (and it's safe to say the latter, unless there's something [[Twentieth Century Fox]] isn't telling us) who looks the same as she did working on the movie!
* To an extent in ''[[
* ''[[
* The 2009 ''[[Fame]]'' remake has numerous examples: Victor (played by Walter Perez, age 27), Denise (Naturi Naughton, 25), Marco (Asher Book, 21). The actors closest to the actual age of the characters they play are Kherington Payne (Alice) and Kay Panabaker (Jenny), both 19.
* In ''[[Breakfast On Pluto]]'', [[Cillian Murphy]] plays Kitten both as an adult and as a teenager, and makes a pretty good teenager for an actor in his early 30s. Of course, playing a 16-year
** Don't forget the film for ''Disco Pigs'', where Cillian played a 16-year
* The [[Peter Jackson]] film ''[[Heavenly Creatures]]'' has [[Kate Winslet]] and [[Melanie Lynskey]] playing 14 year olds when they were 19 and 17, respectively. Probably out of a legal necessity, as there was a lesbian love scene in the film.
* Christine Taylor (Marcia), Jennifer Elise Cox (Jan), and Christopher Daniel Barnes (Greg) were all in their twenties when cast in the mid-90s [[The Brady Bunch (
* In ''[[Rob B Hood]]'', [[
* ''Breaking Away'': The four lead characters are supposed to be 19. [[Jackie Earle Haley]] was 17 at the time, then there was [[Dennis Quaid]] (25), Dennis Christopher (24), and Daniel Stern (22).
* Caroline Munro played a high school student in the 1986 slasher flick ''Slaughter High''. Munro was born in 1949. You do the math.
* In ''Warlock'', a 30-year
* [[Johnny Depp]] was 46 when he starred as John Dillinger in ''[[Public Enemies]]''. The real John Dillinger was killed at the ripe old age of 31.
* [[Anna Paquin]] was roughly 23 when she played a seventeen year old in ''Margaret''. Due to the film going through a lengthy period of post-production [[Development Hell]], she was 29 when it was finally released in 2011.
* ''[[David And Lisa]]'', 1962, starred then 26-year
* ''[[Stand and Deliver]]'' features a 25 year old Lou Diamond Phillips playing a high school senior.
* ''[[Wet Hot American Summer]]'' has hilariously age inappropriate actors including Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd playing high school aged camp counselors. I believe it was intentional.
* The casting of ''[[Moonstruck]]'' is all over the place in terms of age. Cher was a 42-year
* Played with quite a bit in the movie of ''[[
** Justified: As with the series, the main characters are adults passing off as teenagers to investigate youth crimes. Jonah Hill somewhat looks the part, even at 27; but Channing Tatum is over thirty and looks like it.
** Not quite as Hill and Tatum are still at least a few years older then the real age of the characters they are playing which is 24 or 25. Hill not as bad at about 27 at the time of filming but Tautum over 30
** Lampshaded: Channing's character is handwaved as having repeated two classes; similarly, his secret identity is supposed to have repeated a year. {{spoiler|After he exchanged secret identities with Jonas' character}}, he's called out three times as looking too old.
** Inverted: On the other hand, Channing's character accuses another student of looking too young: this particular character is indeed a 15-year
** Played straight: With the rest of the "high-schoolers" cast, especially the main drug dealer played by 26-year
* ''[[La Reine Margot (
* ''[[
* The casting of the title role in 1984's ''[[Supergirl (
* In ''[[
** Much is made of how Yoshi is the youngest of the protagonists, and inexperienced and hot-headed as a result. [[Gackt]] meanwhile is pushing forty (but looks twenty years younger).
* Not sure if straight or inverted: In Oliver Stone's ''Alexander'', Colin Farrell plays Alexander, and Angelina Jolie plays his mother despite being nearly the same age. Diana Cook of ''[[Cracked.com]]'' calls out ''Alexander'' in #2 of "[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-unwritten-rules-hollywood-needs-to-stop-following/ 5 Unwritten Rules Hollywood Needs to Stop Following]".
* Deliberately played with in ''[[A Stupid and Futile Gesture]]'', the 2018 [[Biopic]] about ''[[National Lampoon]]'' co-founder Doug Kenney. Kenney, who died in his thirties, is portrayed in the film by ''two'' different actors -- Martin Mull [[Narrator|narrates]] the film as a never-to-exist [[Grumpy Old Man|elder version of Kenney]], while on-screen, the twenty-something Kenney is played forty-something Will Forte; this latter casting is explicitly [[Lampshaded]] when a rapid [[Crawl]] appears in the middle of the movie listing its creative liberties, starting with the age disparity.
=== Live-Action TV ===
* Arthur Fonzarelli in ''[[Happy Days]]'' was supposed, in the early episodes at least, to be seventeen years old. The Fonz was played by Henry Winkler, who was twenty-nine when the show started, and thirty-nine when it ended. His age seemed all the more obvious when he was seen romancing an actress clearly in her teens or twenties.
* Back to the [[Trope Namers]], ''[[Dawson's Creek]]'': Much worse than ''Dawson'''s leads were the actors introduced later on: Kerr Smith (26) and Meredith Monroe (29) playing siblings (and high school sophomores) [[Suddenly Sexuality|Jack]] and [[Genki Girl|Andie]] McPhee starting in Season 2. Worse considering that Andie was likely the ''younger'' sibling.
** On the behind-the-scenes parts of the [[Series Finale]] movie, James Van Der Beek was amused that it was the first time he and Dawson were the same age (because there was a five-year time skip from the last episode to the movie).
* The Creek was not the worst offender. That title might well go to ''[[
** The most jarring example from the series might have been when 27
** Also Oz and Jonathan, played by 23-year
** [[Sarah Michelle Gellar]], who was 19 when she began playing a 16-year
** [[James Marsters]] as Spike played the role from 1997 (when he was 35), reprising the role in ''Angel'' up until 2003 (When he was 42) playing a character who was implied to be of similar physical age to characters like Buffy. Somewhat averted due to his being a vampire and hundreds of years old.
** Averted however with Dawn, played by an actress of the correct age (who eventually ended up taller than Sarah Michelle Gellar).
*** Though she was originally intended to be a preteen, which is very clear in the first few episodes she appears in, before the scripts were written with Michelle Trachtenberg in mind.
* ''[[Beverly Hills, 90210]]'' is well-known for this sort of thing, but [[Common Knowledge|believe it or not]], quite a few of the cast members were actual teenagers. Of course, some of the core cast of high school juniors (ages
** This trope is played ridiculously straight on the reboot ''90210''. The youngest cast members were 19 when the series started, and the rest range from their early twenties to Trevor Donovon who was ''30'' when he began his stint. Honorable mentions are Michael Steger (28 at the beginning) and Matt Lanter (25 at the beginning). What's even crazier is that those three "teens" are all older than actor Ryan Eggold who plays the English lit. teacher!
* Inverted in ''[[Samurai Sentai Shinkenger]]'' with 14 year old Runa Natsui playing 17 year old Kaoru Shiba
* Inverted with [[Hiknin Sentai Akibaranger]] with 16 year old Karin Ogino playing 23/24 year old Yuko Yamada aka Yumeria Moegi
** Justified and Lampshaded in that she's supposed to look much younger then she is.
* 22-year
* 23-year
* Senta Moses is an actress who is very short and has very curly hair... which contributed to her playing a 17-year
** Similarly, she played a 16-year
** And in 2009, at 35, she's playing an apparently early 20-something computer tech on ''[[General Hospital]]''.
* ''[[Roswell]]'': not one of the members of the younger cast (supposedly 16-17 at the start) was a teenager, with the exception of 18-year
* 24-year
** In one episode, Lex was stalked by a servant girl about 10 years younger than he. She was played by Azura Skye, who in real life is indeed about 9 years younger than Rosenbaum; but in ''[[Zoe Duncan Jack And Jane]]'' she played his fraternal twin sister.
** Although Kristen Kreuk, and Allison Mack ''were'' just barely 18 at the start. Michael Rosenbaum was 29 playing the supposedly 21-year
*** Sam Jones III (Pete Ross) was also 18 at the start.
** Tom Welling is two years older than Brandon Routh (Clark/Superman in ''[[
* 31-year
* 25-year
* ''[[The OC]]'' is guilty of this, as mentioned in the quote at the top, with teens in their late 20s and parents in their early 30s.
** ''[[The OC]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade]] on this trope, among many others, with their show-within-a-show, "The Valley."
* The teenage characters of ''[[The Vampire Diaries]]'' are played by 20something actors, starting with Nina Dobrev (20), Steven R. McQueen (21), Katerina Graham (20), Caroline Accola (22), Kayla Ewell and Zach Roerig (both 24). All of them play high school students. Stefan and Damon Salvatore, who [[Older Than They Look|got vamped]] at the ages of 17 and 24 respectively, are played by Paul Wesley (27) and Ian Somerhalder (31).
** This is rendered extra absurd by the fact that 22-year
* ''Popular,'' from 1999, about high school students played by 20-something-year
** Possibly intentional as it something of a parody of High School Dramas
* In their junior year (season one), when you would expect them all to be about 16 or 17, some of the main characters of ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' were: the titular heroine (24-year
** Which worked fine, except for [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0739544/ the episode] in season two, in which then 24-year
** The series actually had an even more prominent example in the first season; [[Amanda Seyfried]] was only 18 when the series started, yet Lilly was supposedly a year older than Veronica (and all of her
** There was also Charisma Carpenter who played the 25-year
{{quote|
'''Veronica:''' She's ''twenty-five''. }}
*** However, it's later found out that {{spoiler|Kendall had assumed the identity of a younger highschool student and was actually older than first thought.}}
*** Even then {{spoiler|Kendall's 'real' is still about seven years younger than Charisma's and presumably she was supposed to at least ''look'' 25, in-universe if nothing else.}}
** Kind of [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the mini-episode shot to promote a possible season 4. Veronica is supposed to be in her mid-twenties, having graduated both college and the FBI academy, yet as one of the younger new recruits, she gets picked to go undercover as a teenager.
* ''[[
** Griffin, Carly's love interest in "iDate A Bad Boy", was played by a 23 year old and looked like it, especially in some shirtless scenes, is supposed to be a high school senior. The episode involved some heavy make out sessions with the star of the show [[
* On ''[[
* This trope is subverted in ''[[
* Julianna Rose Mauriello was 13 when she took on the role of 8-year
** And if rumors are to be believed, ''[[
* ''[[
** The early seasons had most actors between 18-21, with subsequent seasons going off in many different directions.
** ''[[
*** Though in that case, the trope still would've been played straight as several of the actors were a few years older than a high school senior. The trope would've been averted, though, with Austin St. John, who was 18 at the time.
**
** Melanie Vallejo, who plays the 17/18-year
** Played straight and inverted in the case of Olivia Tennet (Dr. K) from ''[[Power Rangers RPM
** [[Atop the Fourth Wall
* Both [[Disney Channel]] and [[ABC Family]] loves to use this every now and then. And yes, they're not ashamed to use it.
** ''[[
** ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' has Jackson Stewart, who is (currently) depicted as a high school senior, while Jason Earles (who plays Jackson) is actually, {{spoiler|35 as of 2012}}
** Likewise, ''[[
** Slightly inverted on ''[[The Secret Life of the American Teenager]]'': Some cast members actually were teenagers when the series started (the youngest being 15 ([[India Eisley]], at the time the show was first aired)), and were only a couple of years older than their characters. Played straight with other members of the cast who were all in their early twenties from the get-go (the oldest member being a then 24-year
** Lampshaded in the TV version of ''[[
*** Indeed, the only teenage role actually played by a teenager is 16-year
** ''[[
** ''[[Pretty Little Liars (TV series)|Pretty Little Liars]]''. The four main characters are 16 but their actresses are between the ages of 20 and 25. The most egregious example is the character of Maya, who is 16 but is played by 31-year
*** Bianca Lawson was in ''[[Saved
** The four main teen characters on ''[[Make It or Break It]]'' are played by actresses between the ages of 20 and 25.
*** Chelsea Hobbs, who was 24 when she began playing Emily Kmetko, was already a mother {{spoiler|before her character was [[Put
** ''[[Even Stevens]]'' used this heavily. Applies to the entire cast to a significant but albeit mostly believable degree, but especially [[Egregious]] with Donnie, a star athlete in high school played by an actor in his mid-twenties, and Ren, a 13-14 year old middle school student whose actress was well into high school age.
** Made even worse that the two seasons the show ran kept them the same age.
** A funny example is when Shia Labeouf was cast a 12 the same age as Lewis was, a pilot was filmed. By the time the show was fully in production after having been in [[Development Hell]] for a couple of years Labeouf was noticeably older. This is most apparent in The season 1 finale which uses footage from the pilot as a flashback. Lewis looks years younger besides the events of the flashback taking place likely only a few months prior as it's Lewis first day of 7th grade which he is in for the duration of the show.
** Tiffany Thorntoni, the actress that plays Tawni Hart in ''[[Sonny With a Chance]]'' and now ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[
** 23-year
** 21-year
** 25-year
** 21-year
*** And again at the age of 27 in the stage adaptation "Seven Keys To Doomsday", she played 17-18-year
** 23-year
** 26-year
** The new series two-parter The Doctor Dances/The Empty Child has a subversion. {{spoiler|Nancy, played by 21-year
* The spinoff ''[[
* ''[[
* Melissa Joan Hart started playing 16-year
** This is actually a good example of how the line ''blurs'' as actors and characters grow older, although this effect only happens in works where the ''characters'' age roughly in realtime.
** Additionally, when she was 15 she played the role of the similarly aged Clarissa Darling in ''[[Clarissa Explains It All]]'' which ran from 1991 to 1994.
* In ''[[Terminator (
** A reporter for Boston's Fox affiliate referred to Glau and costar Thomas Dekker as the show's "teen stars" in a promo for an interview segment. Dekker was 20. He was however, never supposed to be a teenager in the show.
*** Except for those little details about attending high school and celebrating his 16th birthday at the end of S1.
** In a second season episode, Cameron was seen being served alcohol in a bar. It's likely she has IDs to cover a wide variety of ages.
*** Similarly, but less drastically, is [[Summer Glau]]'s portrayal of River Tam in ''[[
**** She's actually a year OLDER than Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee and would have been about 19 during shooting. To be fair, no official age is ever given for Kaylee, but it's presumably at least a few years older than River.
** In ''Terminator 2,'' Sarah Connor is called "29 years old" in an APB. Since her son (conceived in the first movie) is now 10 (played by 14 year old Edward Furlong). She would have been 19 at the most in the first movie. Linda Hamilton would have been 28 at the time.
*** [[All There in the Manual|According to the]] [[Novelization]], this is exactly right - the first section to focus on (the right) Sarah gives her age as 19.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'':
** Plays this straight with Sharon Valerii, who is supposed to be younger than Kara Thrace. In real life [[Grace Park]], who plays Sharon, is actually six years ''older'' than [[Katee Sackhoff]] as Kara.
** Speaking of whom: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is about 28–29 years old by the end of the third season, going by a reference to her having graduated from the military academy six years previously. [[Katee Sackhoff]], the actress who played Kara, was only 26 at the time.
** For that matter, the fact that she was cast could be considered an [[Inverted Trope|inversion of this trope]]: the original script for the miniseries described Starbuck as being in her thirties. Katee was 22 when she tried out for the part and eventually got it, despite initial objections from the casting directors that she was too young.
* Actress Rachel True played teenagers when she was in her early 30s and young twenty-somethings when she was in her late 30s to early 40s.
** In ''[[Half Baked]]'', at 32, she's girlfriend to 25 year old Dave Chappelle. Of course, her character's age isn't given, and this editor doesn't see why he couldn't date a chick seven years older than him, especially as Hollywood does the inversion of that ''all the fucking time''.
* Trina McGee started playing high school senior Angela Moore on ''[[
* ''[[Strangers
* [[
** His music had already established that trend, with story songs placing him in the role of a young teen in high school even though he was in his late teens and early twenties at the time.
* Chiara Zanni, who plays the main character "Amy" on [[Teen Nick|The N]] show ''[[About A Girl]],'' was 29 years old during filming, yet she plays a supposedly "young college student."
* Gary Burghoff of ''[[
** There was a heavy dose of
*** This, combined with the fact that the show lasted almost four times as long as the war it portrayed, gave rise to some excellent accidental [[Fridge Brilliance]]: along with other signs of aging, Hawkeye's hair went from jet black to pure grey over the course of the
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Law
** In an episode of ''[[Law
** The [[Ripped
** In ''[[CSI: NY]]'' {{spoiler|this was gender-reversed; the conwoman was turned into a pair of paedophiles, the girlfriends were date-raped and the guidance counselor was killed when he found out}}.
* All of the secondary school pupils in the seventies Britcom ''[[
* Nog, in ''[[Star Trek
** [[Wil Wheaton]] was 15 when playing a 15-year
*** One of the worst examples was the Original Series episode "Miri". The "kids" in that would have died if they'd hit puberty (so "early" blooming cannot explain this away)--but some of them looked like they were in their thirties. Or older.
** The best-known
*** The [[Star Trek (
* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]],'' Nicholas D'Agosto was 27 years old when he started playing high school student West Rosen.
** In "Five Years Gone" and other episodes set in an alternate future, Claire doesn't look notably older {{spoiler|but as her genetic ability slows her aging process to a stop, like it did with Adam Monroe, this is understandable}}.
* Period drama ''[[Upstairs, Downstairs]]'' is an interesting case of [[Justified Trope]]
** Pauline Collins is several years older than the age of her character, Sarah, in the first few episodes, but like Elizabeth, they line up better by her last episode. It seems less egregious with an adult actor, because it's perfectly legitimate to cast someone according to the age she appears, rather than her actual age, and Collins did look younger than she was.
* J.D. Williams was 24 when he began playing then-16-year
** Another surprising example from ''[[The Wire]]'': Lt. Daniels is the apparently forty-ish [[Bald Black Leader Guy|squad commander]], and Carver is the late-twenties junior officer. But their actors, Lance Reddick and Seth Gilliam, were both in their mid-thirties at the start of the show, and Gilliam is actually a year older than Reddick.
** Another adult example is the 35 year old Michael K Williams as the approximately-28 year old (in season one) Omar Little. This seems like a fairly trivial age gap, but it seems more striking when paired with Ernest Waddell (who is almost twenty years younger than Williams, making him 17 during the filming of season 2), who played Omar's lover Dante in seasons 2 and 3.
* The TV adaptation of ''[[Gossip Girl]]'' is chock full of this. Spoofed on ''[[
** On the other hand, many people are surprised to learn that Taylor Momsen is the same age as her character.
** Which actually ended up causing problems when Chace Crawford objected to his character's romance with Momsen's character, because while the characters were only two years apart Momsen was fifteen and he was twenty-three. They ended up scuppering the pairing because of how uncomfortable he was with it.
* At 26 years old Keiko Agena played the then 15- or 16-year
** Milo Ventimiglia was 25 when he started playing 17-year
* ''[[Party of Five]]'' had the (then) 26-year
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in season 3 where Bailey's friend, seeing his fake ID, was very surprised that anyone would believe he's 27.
* Due to the fact that time on the show passes much slower than in real life, 10-year
** They try to disguise his aging... but in the season 4 finale, they ''don't'' disguise it, since {{spoiler|it's in flashforwards set three years after he left the island}}, which still doesn't work because he's too old for {{spoiler|13}}. Prior to his appearance in {{spoiler|the flashforwards}} he had appeared a few times and the show began to lampshade the changes to Walt, for instance Locke described how Walt suddenly showed up, but was taller, more so than the few months that had passed on the show to explain.
* Inverted to the point of absurdum on ''[[
* The cast in ''[[
* The star of [[
* A five year [[Time Skip]] between the 4th and 5th seasons of ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' has led to this trope being inverted for several of the characters: 23-year
* The television version made in Italy in the '70s of the book ''Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca''(''Johnny Whirlwind's Diary'') have 30-year
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[
{{quote|
'''Chandler''': Yes, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the dumbest a person can look, you are definitely 19. }}
** Also played straight on ''Friends'', as every flashback to (and video evidence from) Ross, Monica, and Rachel's high school days featured the regular actors playing themselves at 18.
* ''[[Jeeves and Wooster (TV series)|Jeeves and Wooster]]'' has it both ways. Both [[Hugh Laurie]] and [[Stephen Fry]] were in their early 30s when the series started in 1990. The ages of the characters are never given in the books, but it would seem that Bertie Wooster (Laurie) was in his early-to-mid 20s and Jeeves (Fry) in his 40s. Of course, their ages are never given in the series, either, so [[Powers That Be]] could get away with it. By way of contrast, the Jeeves movies of the mid-1930s starred 40-year
* The WB's ''Jack & Bobby'' featured 24-year
* ''[[
{{quote|
* In BBC sitcom ''[[
* Kal Penn was 29 when he played a high school student in Season 6 of ''[[
** Elisha Cuthbert was 19 when she started playing Kim Bauer, who was sixteen at the time of Season 1. As of Season 7, she's 27 and her character's 34!
* One episode of ''[[
* The plot of ''[[
* The Canadian sitcom ''[[Life
* On the UK "dramedy" ''[[Shameless]]'' 21-year
** Duff was 30 years old when she appeared in ''The Magdalene Sisters'' as Margaret, who ages from 16 or 17 to 20-ish. The film also starred the then 25-year
* Burt Ward, the teenaged
* The 16/17 year old Baker twins in ''[[Privileged]]'' skirt this trope - while at the time of first airing (in 2008) Lucy Hale (Rose) was only nineteen, Ashley Newbrough (Sage) was almost 21. Also, main character Megan Smith is supposed to be 23, while Joanna Garcia was 29 when the show first aired.
* Some of the younger patients on ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' have this. One example is the 15-year
** Several of the doctors on the team invert this to some extent, [[Doogie Howser, M.D.
** The episode "Not Cancer" had an ''incredibly'' obvious example, with an alleged 4-year
* ''[[Friday Night Lights (TV series)|Friday Night Lights]]'' is way guilty of this; many of the actors playing juniors and seniors in highschool are in their mid-to-late twenties.
* The six main characters of the short-lived show ''[[Life As We Know It]]'' were all supposed to be high school sophomores (15/16), but all of their actors were 21 or 22 during filming, except for Jessica Lucas, who was 19.
* ''[[
** Justified/Lampshaded with at least one member of the rival glee club, Vocal Adrenaline, who is a 24-year
** [[Hilarity Ensues]] with a recent [[Moral Guardians|Parents' Television Council]] statement on the "near pedophilia" of a recent racy GQ shoot starring Lea Michele and Diana Agron. Both were 24.
** It's arguably justified in that every episode is a [[Musical Episode]]; it would probably be difficult too find high-school aged actors that could sing ''and'' act convincingly enough to compete with whom they've actually cast.
** Diana Cook of ''[[Cracked.com]]'' doesn't like this trope. She calls out ''Glee'' in #4 "[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-unwritten-rules-hollywood-needs-to-stop-following/ 5 Unwritten Rules Hollywood Needs to Stop Following]" and calls out ''[[Glee]]''.
* Totally averted by BBC children's dramas ''[[Byker Grove]]'' and ''[[Grange Hill]]'', where all the actors playing children were about the same age as their characters. Some were even a year or so younger.
* ''[[Grey's Anatomy]]'' pulls off Dawson Casting with tweens: In season 1, the characters start their internship at the Seattle Grace, so they should be around 25 (give or take). Ellen Pompeo playing Meredith was 35 at the time of filming and the actors of Cristina, George and Alex were also in their thirties. Only averted with 26-year-old Katherine Heigl as Izzie.
** It's justifiable, at least in some cases- Meredith, for example, is said to have taken time off before med school, and most of the characters don't have stated ages. But it's kind of confusing when considering a character like Cristina- Sandra Oh is clearly in her 30s, so the only logical explanation is that Cristina also took time off at some point during her education, something that [[Insufferable Genius|Cristina]] would never do.
* The Channel 4 docudrama series ''The Queen'' had a mild case with the 26-year
** The same two actresses played sisters again in the BBC's ''Merlin'', although this is arguably more [[Justified Trope]] as the Arthurian legends tend to suggest a fairly wide age gap between Morgause and Morgan le Fay/Morgana
* ''[[That
* Then-18-year
* All the older teenage characters in the HBO adaptation of ''[[
** Peter Dinklage (mid 40s) playing Tyrion Lannister (early 20s) is a rather extreme example, even though the character is out of his teens. [[Justified Trope]], as casting a dwarf in a serious drama is rather difficult. This should also become an issue as the actors who play the younger children, such as Arya Stark, who are now relatively close in age to their characters, grow up.
* In series three of ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', 29-year
* In ''[[
* German actress Josefine Preuss (b. 1986) has not visibly aged since she was about 15. Guess which roles she usually gets.
* ''[[Twin Peaks]]''. Keep in mind that the actors age two years, and the characters age about half a month. But at the beginning, their ages were...
** 19-year
** 20-year
** 21-year
** 23-year
** 23-year
** 23-year
** 25-year
* Mexican comedy ''[[El Chavo
** Considering all the [[Amusing Injuries]] that the "kids" go through in the show, it'd be pretty disturbing otherwise.
* In ''[[CSI: NY]]'' "Grounds For Deception", Stella Bonasera is revealed to have been born in 1975, making her character 35. Melina Kanakaredes who portrays Bonasera is currently 42.
* Patrick McKenna was '''''31''''' when he started playing teen-aged Harold on ''[[
* Somehow simultaneously played straight and subverted at the same time with ''[[
* In ''[[
** Also [[Inverted Trope]]. The oldest members of the cast were Arnold Ridley (Charles Godfrey) and John Laurie (James Frazer), both into their seventies as the programme started, while 70-year
* In the British comedy ''[[
** Julia Sawalha does genuinely look 16, though. Does it fit the trope if the actor genuinely does look like a teenager?
*** When the series picked up after a break, Sawalha's age was beginning to catch up with her, and she looked closer to her real age than to Saffy's age. There is a joke, when another character looks at her passport and says she can't believe Saffy is that young, she looks older. Saffy makes a sarcastic comment with a look at her mother, that stress ages a person.
* In ''[[
* In the 1998 series ''[[Merlin
* In ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'' 37 year old Stephen Graham plays [[Al Capone]], who was 21 at the time the show is set.
* ''[[
* Charlotte Coleman was in her early 20s when playing teenage Jess in the TV adaptation of ''[[Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit]]''.
* On the [[Soap Opera]] ''[[All My Children]]'', [[Sarah Michelle Gellar]] first appeared on the show at the real-life age of 18, but she appeared as the main character [[Erica Kane]]'s previously-unknown daughter. [[Susan Lucci]], the actress who portrays Erica, has been on the show since it first aired, and there had never been a mention of an unknown daughter being born. The show tried to cover this up by claiming that the daughter was the product of a rape of Erica when she was 13, which would have made Gellar's character in her 20s. Nobody really bought it, but just wrote it off as [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].
* The ''[[
* More [[Selma Blair]] examples:
** ''[[The Adventures of Pete and Pete]]'' almost avoided this until 23-year
** ''Amazon High'' with then-25-year
** ''Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane'' starring then-27
** The American version of ''[[Kath and Kim]]'' with a 36-year
* ''[[
* ''The Hardy Boys
** Inverted in Disney's adaptation for ''[[The Mickey Mouse Club]]'', in which the actors Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk were younger than the
* ''[[Boston Public]]''
* In ''[[
* ''[[Square Pegs]]'' is a show from the 1982/1983 season about the two groups of 14 year old freshman who vie for popularity. It is often overlooked for this trope because half of the cast is under 18 (though all older than their characters). However, the other half was over 18, including Tracy Nelson (Jennifer) who was born in 1963, Jon Caliri (Vinnie) who was born in 1960, Merritt Butrick (Slash) who was born in 1959, and Claudette Wells (LaDonna) who was born in 1954, making her 28, making her twice the age of her character.
* Gabe Kaplan stated [[Word of God|in interviews]] that he believed part of the reason the ratings for ''[[Welcome Back
* Both averted and played straight in ''[[
* ''[[Lincoln Heights]]'' has quite an extreme example with the 27-28 year old (during season 1) Erica Hubbard playing 16 year old Cassie Sutton. What makes this particularly interesting is that the actors portraying her parents where born in 1970 and 1974, making them only 9 and 5 years older than her. Even more interesting is the actors playing her younger sibling were born in 1992 and 1993, making her 13 and 14 years older than them!
** Erica Hubbard's original birth date was thought to be January 3, 1984 which would have made her about 22-23 during season 1.
* ''[[Kath and Kim]]'s'' Kim is supposed to be in her mid-to-late 20's. Gina Riley, the actress who plays her, is pushing 50.
* An inversion seems to have been the original four series of [[Upstairs, Downstairs]], which covered thirty years of historical period but only four years of real time. The characters remained the same age throughout the series, frozen in time between 1903 and 1930. The only attention paid to the passage of time seemed to be James, who grew grey about the temples. In the modern remake, Jean Marsh, now forty years older, reprises her role as Rose Buck, meaning Rose ages forty years in only six between the end of the Bellamy era in 1930 and the beginning of the Holland residence at Eaton Place in 1936. It does help, however, that the cast changed periodically, with Hazel and then Virginia replacing Lady Marjorie as "her Ladyship" and the introduction of another young lady, Georgina, to take on Elizabeth Bellamy-Kirbridge's role in the story. In the servants' hall, the cast similarly gains and loses members (adding Frederick and Daisy in the 1920s), but as the series progresses we still never see Rose, Edward, Hudson, Mrs Bridges or Ruby age.
* In the Canadian series ''[[Student Bodies]]'', all the actors playing teenagers were in their early 20s.
* Annie Edison on ''[[
** Donald Glover as well, who plays Troy, who start off as 20, while he's also in his mid-twenties. The real kicker is the fact that Gillian Jacobs, who's the same age as Brie and Glover, plays a character who's close to ten years old than Troy and Annie.
* ''[[
* A truly bizarre example from ''[[
* Gerard Campion, the star of the long-running BBC series about ''Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School'' (Bunter was in the fourth form), was 29 when he '''began''' playing the role. It lasted for close to a decade...
* ''[[Downton Abbey]]'' starts out by doing this; for example, Lady Sybil is 16 at the time the show begins, but played by the 21-year
* When ''[[
* In ''[[
* In the miniseries ''Love, Lies and Murder'', a woman is murdered and two teenage girls are involved. 24-year
* In the [[Britcom]] ''[[
* The core cast of the original ''[[Fame]]'' television series in the 80s suffered from this—in the first season Lori Singer was 25, Carlo Imperato was 21, Valerie Landsburg was 24, Lee Curreri was 21, Gene Anthony Ray was 20, and they were all presumed to be playing 14-year-olds. Erica Gimpel was perhaps closest to her character's age, being 18 in the first season.
=== Music ===
* [[
* [[
* [[
* [[
* Belinda Carlisle had a youthful-sounding voice and used it to make references about being a "kid" in "school" finding love for the first time with her band The Go-Gos. In the late 1980s, she became a solo artist to make album after album where every song was about finding love for the first time yet again, replete with air-brushed album covers to make her look like someone born after 1958.
* Cyndi Lauper, another 30-something in the 1980s who got famous about singing about being a "girl" instead of a woman.
* Pete Burns was 26 when he released his album "Youthquake" and the other members of British New Wave band called "Dead or Alive" were in their late 20s and early 30s.
* [[Spice Girls]]
* The [[
* [[
* [[New Kids
* [[
* Indigo Girls
* At the age of 26, [[
* Several of [[
* In [[BTS (band)|BTS]]'s autobiographical videogame ''BTS World'', they [[Autobiographical Role|interpreted themselves]] in scenes fictionalizing their pre-debut era and early career. Problem is, those scenes took place around 2012-2013, when most of the filming and the photography for the game took place between 2016 and 2018. While the majority of the members doesn't look ''that'' much older than their younger selves, it gets very jarring when actual footage of their early career era appears, since the styling they wore at the time is very different to the one the guys have in the game cutscenes, further highlighting the age difference.
** Averting this trope may be what have caused the decision of the most recent installments of their "BTS Universe" story line to be a videogame with CGI models and a drama with actual actors, as the band members are becoming older than their characters in said 'verse.
=== Other ===
* [[The Bible|The Virgin Mary]] is usually played by an actress over the age of 20, but historians say she was about 14 when she became pregnant with Jesus.
=== Theater ===
* In most productions of ''[[Rent]]'', the nineteen-year-old Mimi Marquez will be played by women in their 20s, most notably in [[The Movie]], where she was played by the then 26-year-old [[Rosario Dawson]].
** The movie in general is a good example of this trope, with most of the original cast reprising their roles eight years after they'd created them onstage.
*** Forget Rosario Dawson - there was a New Zealand production of ''Rent'' in 2010 where the person who played Mimi was Annie Crummer. Granted, Annie Crummer is awesome, but she was in her forties. She's more than twice the age Mimi is in the production. Good grief.
* Likewise, sixteen-year-old Johanna in ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'' gets this frequently. In the 1982 stage recording she's played by 28-year-old Betsy Joslyn. Lisa Vroman, who played her in a 2001 concert production, refuses to give her age but it's definitely well past the teen years. 20-year-old Jayne Wisener, who plays the role in the movie, is pretty close by comparison.
** This happens with almost any teenage character in musical theatre, most notably:
*** Marius, Enjolras, Cosette, Eponine, and the students in ''[[Les Misérables (
*** Anne and Henrik Egerman, and Petra in [[Stephen Sondheim]]'s ''A Little Night Music''. Anne is seventeen or eighteen, Henrik is nineteen, and Petra is twenty-one. For Anne, the age-up is also to soften the squickiness of her marriage to forty-something Fredrik Egerman (though that's probably intentional).
*** And of course, ''[[Spring Awakening]]'' (both the play and musical), which features a cast of almost entirely fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds usually played by actors who are all out of high school. This is due in part mainly to the explicitly sexual nature of the material, but also to the rampant ageism... well, everywhere... which states that actual teenagers would not be competent enough to play these roles.
*** Christine and Raoul in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'', who are somewhere around twenty but often played by older actors. Inexplicably, the film Christine is played by a sixteen-year-old Emmy Rossum (with the character aged down to match) and Raoul is played by 30-year-old Patrick Wilson, even though the two are supposed to be former childhood sweethearts.
* Matthew Broderick was twenty-one when he originated the role of fifteen-year-old Eugene Morris Jerome in Neil Simon's ''Brighton Beach Memoirs''. Jonathan Silverman was twenty when he assumed the role for the film version.
* This is probably pretty common with Chekhov in general, there was particularly grievous casting for ''[[The Seagull]]''. Take for instance the 2001 production at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, which featured 34-year-old Phillip Seymour Hoffman as 25-year-old Konstantin Trepliev, 52-year-old Meryl Streep as 43-year-old Irina Arkadina, 54-year-old Kevin Kline as thirty
* In the 2008 Metropolitan Opera version of ''Salome'', the titular character, who is supposedly in her teens, is played by 48-year-old Karita Mattila, complete with momentary nudity.
** This happens a ''lot'' in opera, mostly because the vocal maturity and training required for the music are very hard to achieve at a young age.
*** Especially jarring with "pants roles", like Cherubino from ''[[
*** Such roles were usually written either during the hey-day of Castrato singers, or while their popularity was starting to fade. Seeing a 50-year-old woman playing a 14-year-old boy might be jarring, but seeing a 50-year-old man playing the same part and singing ''in a woman's register'' would be downright [[
* Presumably all productions of ''[[Peanuts
** No presumably about it; ageist or not, children of that age haven't the ability, nor the endurance, to pull off such a long and complex show (he said, having rehearsed four children for hours on ''one number'' for a brief version that was still messed up in performance)
* All the main characters of ''[[The
* In ''[[Wicked (
** The characters do go through a timeskip, though not nearly as large a one as in the books, so they eventually become closer to their actors ages.
* Need we even mention ''[[Peter Pan (
** Oh, yes, you must!
** Oh, no, you mustn't! ([[The Fast Show|OK, OK, coat...]])
*** How about [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/Mrb5.jpg/300px-Mrb5.jpg Mr. B Natural?] ([[Nightmare Fuel]])
* The main characters in ''[[
* The role of eleven-year-old Iris in Morris Panych's ''Girl in the Goldfish Bowl'' was written for an actress in her mid-thirties, and is always played by an adult.
* In ''[[Blood Brothers (
* In the 1996 production of ''A Thousand Clowns'' at the Roundabout Theatre in New York, Murray, a character who is supposed to be in his twenties or perhaps thirties, was played by then 61-year-old Judd Hirsch, while his older brother Arnold was played by then 59-year-old David Margulies.
* Most high school productions of ''[[
* An in-universe example from ''Thoroughly Modern Millie''. In the song "They Don't Know", the obviously past her prime Ms. Meers remarks that she could still play Juliet if the theater is big enough.
* Theater
* The three girls in ''[[Vanities]]'' are usually played by late 20- or 30-somethings. They start out as high school students at age 17, progressing through college and beyond, and by the end of [[The Musical]] they are about 40, inverting this trope to some extent. At the time of the 2009 off-Broadway run, Anneliese Van der Pol (Kathy) was 25, Lauren Kennedy (Mary) was 36, and Sarah Stiles (Joanne) was 30.
* In the world premiere of ''Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World'', Sheri, early 20's, was played by Carol Roscoe, age 39.
* Almost all modern productions of ''[[
** In Shakespeare's era, this would be [[Inverted Trope|routinely inverted]] to use the voice of a young boy to stand in for that of a grown woman, as the theatrical stage was no place for a proper, respectable lady.
* The 2004 Off-Broadway version of ''[[Bare: A Pop Opera|bare: a pop opera]]'' had then-26-year-old John Hill, 22-year-old Michael Arden, 29-year-old Jenna Leigh Green, 26-year-old Natalie Joy Johnson and 27-year-old Aaron Lohr playing seventeen-year-old seniors.
* ''[[Next to Normal]]'' had 26-year-old Aaron Tveit in the role of 18-year-old Gabe Goodman. Natalie, however, was played by 17-year-old Jennifer Damiano.
* In ''[[Pokémon Live]]'' the preteen and teenaged protagonists are played by full-grown adults. It shows.
* Any touring company of ''[[Jesus Christ Superstar]]'' featuring Ted Neeley as Jesus. Neeley was actually younger than Jesus when he made the film in 1973. Not so much in the early 21st century.
=== [[Western Animation]] ===
* Animated programming uses voice actors who are heard but not seen on-screen. Wide discrepancies in age or demographics between the actors and the characters which they voice are common; for instance, a nine-year-old boy may be voiced by a divorced mother of two as the voice of a real pre-teen boy would inevitably change as he enters adolescence.
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* Tedd from ''[[
=== Web Original ===
* This was the initial reason that some viewers suspected ''[[
* On the website hosting the [[
* Mocked in ''[[A Very Potter Musical]]'' with
* Lucas Cruikshank was 14 when he started playing six-year-old [[
* [[That Guy With
** That doesn't count because he is in show supposed to not be the real Ma-Ti and very obviously. And in any case is pretending to be a post-series Ma-Ti, hence why he's embittered over his time spent with them.
** Even if that's the case, he still said he was fourteen when he woke up to see [[
* ''[[
* ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3XKdVM24k TechnicalVirgin.com]'' was a [[No Budget]] parody of the teaching of "sexual abstinence" as a substitute for proper sex education in schools. The [[Catholic School Girls Rule|school girl]] delivering [https://observer.com/2006/08/even-mister-rogers-had-a-past-2/ advice] like “One thing I’m not planning on is getting pregnant. That’s why I choose anal sex. I mean, sure it hurts a little, and I wind up walking funny for a day or two. But I think my future’s worth it.” was approximately [[wikipedia:Melanie Martinez (actress)|28 years old]] at the time.
=== Real Life ===
* In a rather [[Squick]] and creepy example, a 29-year-old named Casey Price was found posing as a 7th grader (12 years old), [https://web.archive.org/web/20111120222817/http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/162751/twentynine_year_old_neil_rodreick_poses.html?cat=17 fooling even the two people he was living with].
* A woman, Treva Throneberry, pretended to be a teenager throughout her 20s and early 30s and moved from foster home to foster home. She got a tuition to go to college and was finally arrested for fraud. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130113151357/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams/treva_throneberry/index.html Interestingly, she didn't look especially youthful.]
* 31-year-old Patricia Dye posed as a teenage boy so that she could have sex with a teen girl.
* Adult police officers will often pose as teens to [[Dateline (TV series)|catch sexual predators]], or [[
** Sadly, these sort of entrapment schemes have been the bane of the Internet since the [[Eternal September]] of 1993. Any middle-age, obese police officer that's too fat to chase criminals on foot could sit behind a desk and post to the [[UseNet]] alt.sex.* hierarchy as a seventeen-year-old girl. At some point, anyone claiming to be seventeen in these groups was routinely met with "yeah, right offisher... [[Sarcasm Mode|whatever you say]], offisher".
** It's only gotten worse since then. The scam has merely shifted to web, e-mail or social media now that Usenet is too overrun with spam to be usable. Adding to the problems, every two-bit crackpot vigilante group has taken this scheme into their own hands, [[To Catch a Predator]] style. A few of them are doing more harm than good.
** And then there were the incidents where criminals were posing as young women on dating apps, approaching men (often soldiers) online and sending explicit photos, before making a fraudulent claim to be seventeen and engaging in blackmail and extortion. One such scheme [https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/11/11/how-did-they-run-an-elaborate-sextortion-scam-from-prison-cellphones was being run by convicts while in prison].
** And yes, the actual predators are likely also hiding behind a computer, pretending to be seventeen. The presumption is that the only way to gain the trust of a seventeen-year-old girl is to pose as a seventeen-year-old boy.
** The only people not pretending to be seventeen (if the age of consent is [[Totally Eighteen|eighteen]] in some jurisdiction)? Actual seventeen-year-olds, who are too busy claiming to be eighteen, nineteen, twenty-one or whatever other arbitrary age one has to claim to be to buy a bottle of beer. There are priorities, after all...
* A member of the Hong Kong police force successfully posed as a 15-year-old high school student to uncover Triad recruitment of high school students. [http://www.cracked.com/article_18562_the-6-most-hilarious-undercover-operations-ever-pulled-off_p2.html He got the idea from a movie.]
* There was an incident where a client of a prostitution ring requested an underage girl. [[Even Evil Has Standards|The owner of the ring contacted the police anonymously and agreed to help set up a sting against the client.]] The police sent a female officer to him claiming to be 15-years old. [[What an Idiot!|He believed it and discussed sexual activities with her]] leading to his arrest.
* [[Cosplay]]ers regularly portray characters that are considerably younger than themselves. Characters in their younger to mid-teens are prevalent in many popular series; meanwhile, the skills you need to make your own costumes require time and practice to develop. Even if you opt to buy your costumes, [[Crack is Cheaper|cosplaying eats up a ''lot'' of money either way]], so you're generally much better off if you have an income level more typical of an adult.
* [[Cameron Crowe]] enrolled as a high school student at age 22, to research his book on teen life, called ''[[Fast Times at Ridgemont High]].''
* Similarly, a 33-year-old journalist named Lyn Tornabene enrolled as a high school student in 1964 to find out if the "new generation" was really any different from hers. Her experiences also became a book, 1967's ''[https://mondomolly.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/i-passed-as-a-teenager-by-lyn-tornabene/ I Passed As A Teenager]''. Unlike ''Fast Times'', it's as much about her experiences as a faux teenager as it is about the kids she met.
* [[Kevin Bacon]] enrolled as a high school student prior to filming ''[[Footloose]]'' just to see if he was still believable as a teen at age 25, according to the Footloose DVD commentary.
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923005/ Riley Weston] was born Kimberlee Kramer in 1966. In May 1997, she changed her name and began claiming her date of birth as 1979 in order to be considered for acting roles. The deception was assisted by her small size, with a height of 4'11" and weight of 93 pounds. In 1998, she began drafting screenplays and marketing herself to television studios as a recent high school graduate. She was soon hired by the WB Network as a writer for the show ''[[Felicity]]'' after they saw one of her scripts about teenage sisters. Hailed as a child prodigy and "wunderkind," she was featured on Entertainment Weekly's October 1998 list of the "100 Most Creative People in Entertainment," which described her as an up-and-coming 19-year-old, though she was really 31. Shortly thereafter, she was offered a half-million dollar screenwriting deal with Disney. After ''Entertainment Tonight'' began working on a segment about Weston, her real identity and age soon emerged. Soon after, her contract with WB expired and was not renewed, and her deal with Disney fell through.
* Barbora Škrlová was a 33-year-old Czech woman suspected of child abuse and cannibalism in 2007, who fled to Norway and pretended to be a 13-year-old boy named "Adam". It worked for a while, though she was eventually arrested and sent back to the Czech Republic.
* When [[Shirley Temple]] was signed with Fox Studios (later part of [[Twentieth Century Fox]]), the studio shaved a year off her age to make her seem more precocious, even altering her birth certificate. She was initially presented to the public as a four-year-old when she was actually almost six. Shirley didn't learn how old she really was until she was thirteen.
* Community colleges tend to have students that look well above the age of a typical college student
* Similar to the Shirley Temple example above, Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc had years shaved off their ages when they performed as child stars. Their mother, the legendary [[Stage Mom]] Rose Hovick, reportedly had many fake birth certificates for them and they couldn't be sure of their real ages.
== Exceptions ==
===
* Michelle Trachtenberg was in her late teens playing 18-year-old Jenny in ''[[Eurotrip]]''.
** She played the 11-year-old sixth-grader Harriet in ''[[Harriet the Spy]]'', while the actress was 10 years old to the day when shooting began on October 11, 1995 (this may have been done for labor law reasons, or it may have been a coincidence).
** She went on to play the 17-year-old lead in ''[[Ice Princess]]'', filmed when she was 18. Her co-star [[Hayden Panettiere]], whose character is around the same age as Michelle's (they're in the same grade at school), was 14 at the time.
* [[Daniel Radcliffe]], [[Rupert Grint]], and [[Emma Watson]] were all the same age as their characters in ''[[Harry Potter (
** Emma Watson actually started off younger than Hermione. In the first film, she was 10
** This was the subject of a misaimed parody in ''[[Friedberg and Seltzer|Epic Movie]]'', where the "kids" were all in their forties, and "Hermione" was nine months pregnant. It gets even more inappropriate: "Hermione" was shown smoking.
* The title role in ''[[Babe]]'' was played by 48 different piglets, because they grow so quickly. A ''makeup artist'' was employed to make the pigs look similar.
* All the lead actors of ''[[
* [[Lindsay Lohan]] is the same age as her characters in her early films, particularly ''[[
* Sue Lyon was 14, and playing 14, when she filmed ''[[Lolita]]''. (In the original novel, Lolita was 12; the character's age was raised to comply with the censors. Nabokov himself had said "to make a real 12-year-old girl play such a part in public would be sinful and immoral.") Many are under the mistaken impression that she was 16, because the film was released in 1962, and Lyon was born in 1946. The film was, however, filmed between November 1960-May 1961, and she was born July
** Similarly, [[Dominique Swain]] was 15 when she played the 14-year-old Lolita in [[The Remake]] (again, the character's age was raised to comply with the censors).
* The 10-year-old (at time of filming) [[Fairuza Balk]] played the older but still preteen Dorothy Gale in ''[[Return to Oz]]''.
* [[Michael Cera]] (Evan) was 18 and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fogel/"McLovin") 17 when playing their graduating high-school characters in ''[[Superbad]]''. Jonah Hill (Seth), by contrast, was 23 (due to legal regulations, Mintz-Plasse's mother actually had to be on the set of ''Superbad'' the day his character's sex scene was shot).
* The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of ''[[
* Gogo Yubari, the psychotic 17-year-old killer from ''[[
* [[Leonardo
* Inverted in ''[[Mysterious Skin]]'' with Brady Corbet and Michelle Trachtenberg. Corbet was 15 and playing a 17-18 year-old, while Trachtenberg was 18, the same age as her character.
* The ''[[
* ''[[
* [[Kirsten Dunst]] was eleven years old in ''[[Interview
** Interestingly (according to an interview with Dunst shortly after filming), the director called cut before they actually kissed on almost all takes (you'll notice she has her hand between the camera and their mouths when she leans in for the kiss, presumably to cover this) but there was one time when cut wasn't called early enough. Dunst was not pleased about this.
** The book version of Claudia (Dunst's character) is assumed to be between three and six years old at the time of her turning. The character was likely aged up for the movie because the filmmakers would have had difficulty casting such a young child into the role.
* ''[[The Virgin Suicides]]'': The actresses playing the younger Lisbon sisters were close in age to their characters, from [[Kirsten Dunst]] (16) as 14-15 year-old Lux, to Hanna R. Hall (14) who played 13-year-old Cecilia, to Chelse Swain (15) as 15-16-year-old Bonnie.
* ''[[Lost in Translation (
* In ''Somewhere'', 11-year-old Cleo is played by 11-year-old Elle Fanning (she was 12 by the time of its release).
* Yet another [[Sofia Coppola]] film, ''[[Marie Antoinette (
* [[The Film of the Book]] ''[[Twilight (
* [[Chloë Grace Moretz]], at 11, plays 10-year-old Hit Girl in ''[[Kick-Ass (
* ''[[Matchstick Men]]'' is an unusual case in that an actress in her twenties plays a 14 year old girl with surprising believability, yet {{spoiler|in the end it's revealed that her character really ''is'' in her twenties.}}
* In ''[[Apocalypse Now]]'', [[Laurence Fishburne]] played a 17-year-old soldier, but he was only 14 years old when filming started (due to the film's long period of production and post-production, Fishburne was 17 when the movie was released).
* In ''[[Sixteen Candles]]'' the 16-year-old protagonist is portrayed by a 16-year-old [[Molly Ringwald]]. In the same movie, the trope is delightfully lampshaded by Ringwald's comments on a classmate (played by then-25-year-old Haviland Morris). "I swear to God, Caroline Mulford had to flunk about nine grades."
* In ''[[
* In the movie ''Real Genius,'' Gabe Jarret played a 15-year-old, and was actually 15 at the time of the film's release.
* [[Averted Trope]] in [[Danny Boyle]]'s 2008 film ''[[Slumdog Millionaire]]'': eighteen-year-old Dev Patel plays eighteen-year-old Jamal Malik.
* Partial subversion: In the film version of Bernhard Schlink's ''The Reader'', eighteen-year-old David Kross plays main character Michael Berg from the age of fifteen into his early twenties. Considering the fairly explicit sex scenes with co-star Kate Winslet, there was very little chance of Michael being cast any younger. It is also worth noting that, although this is not mentioned in the film, the book features a brief scene in which Kate Winslet's character Hanna Schmitz expresses the false understanding that Michael is at university already when she starts having sex with him, implying that he looks several years older than he actually is.
* In ''[[Monty
** When the instructor catches one of them playing with an ocarina, he punishes him by making him play on the rugby team later, which is made up of actual children again!
* Mia Sara was perhaps the only ''actual'' teenager in ''[[Ferris
* ''[[Léon: The Professional]]'' features a thirteen-year-old [[Natalie Portman]] playing twelve-year-old Mathilda. Which makes her love towards Leon as poignant as it's odd. (Then again, the character was originally written as a 16-year-old.)
* In ''[[To Have And Have Not]]'', Lauren Bacall was 19 and playing a 22-year-old.
* [[Evan Rachel Wood]] was fourteen when she was cast in ''Thirteen'', the title referring to her character's age (Wood turned fifteen during filming). Considering the sex-and-drugs subject matter of the movie, probably no one would have blamed them if they had cast a baby-faced adult, so it's a notable near-[[Averted Trope|aversion]].
* Tara Steele was about ten when she played teenaged Katie in ''Mockingbird Don't Sing'', though the character was ''supposed'' to look much younger than she really was.
* [[
* ''[[
* Victoire Thivisol was four years old when she played the main role in ''Ponette,'' that of a four-year-old who loses her mother. She even won a Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 1996 Venice Film Festival for her heartbreaking performance.
* All of the teenagers in ''[[Casper (
* The live action adaptation of ''[[
* Disturbingly avoided in ''[[Taxi Driver]]''. [[Jodie Foster]] was 13 when she played the role of a 12-year-old prostitute (except for the nude scenes, which were performed by her older sister, who was of legal age).
* ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' largely kept the actors relatively close to their ages - Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) was fifteen playing fourteen, Heather Menzies (Louisa) fourteen playing thirteen, Duane Chase (Kurt) thirteen playing eleven, Angela Cartwright (Brigitta) twelve playing ten, Debbie Turner (Marta) eight playing seven, and Kym Karath (Gretl) six playing five. Played utterly straight, however, with Charmian Carr (Liesl), who was ''twenty-one'' playing sixteen-going-on-seventeen.
* In ''[[Another Cinderella Story]]'', [[
** ''[[A Cinderella Story]]'' also averts this with [[
* The ''[[Diary of a Wimpy Kid]]'' film adaptation. The supplemental film diary mentioned that a lot of the child actors used were actual middle-schoolers and that the two boys playing Greg and Rowley actually missed their first days of sixth grade to film the movie.
* Borderline case: Most of the actors playing students in ''[[
* In the 2010 version of ''[[True Grit]]'', then 13 year old [[Hailee Steinfeld]] played 14 year old Mattie Ross.
* [[Brooke Shields]], in her 1980s movie appearances from
* [[
* Walking the line in ''[[
* Ann Miller played a character several years older in ''You Can't Take It With You'' when she was fifteen.
* In ''[[Welcome to The Dollhouse]],'' released in 1995, [[Heather Matarazzo]], born in 1982, is the right age to play a seventh grader.
* While a number of the cast members who play tributes in ''[[The Hunger Games (
=== Live-Action TV ===
* Claire Danes (Angela) and Devon Gummersall (Brian) from ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' really were teenagers at the time of filming—although the rest of the teenage characters were played by twenty-somethings (including the aforementioned Senta Moses).
** This is a rare, possibly unique inversion, especially for an actress, as the producers knew that Danes was only 13 years old (at the start of filming) yet they still cast her to play a character two full years older than the actress, without any retcons or fudging the numbers.
** Justified with Jared Leto in the character of Jordan, who is repeating the grade the rest of the kids are in...at least for the second time.
* The teens on ''[[Degrassi]]'' are all played by real
** The show has been slipping into example of this, but only due to a change in season coverage. Early seasons went at an equal time (1 school year per season), since season six ended they now run the series at half the speed (half a school year per season). This means that members of the cast are now older than their characters. However, most new characters are still about the same as their actors ''when introduced'', leaving it well short of being as bad as The Trope Namer or any other example.
* ''[[Beverly Hills, 90210]]'' did manage to avoid
* Most of the original cast on ''[[Saved
** Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack, was 14 when he started on ''Good Morning Miss Bliss'', playing an eighth-grader and was 19 at "graduation". Lark Voorhies, who played Lisa, was only a few weeks younger than Gosselaar. Dustin Diamond was ''three'' years younger than them, and the youngest in the cast, playing an eighth-grader at age 11 (and a high schooler at 12). If you were wondering why it took so long for Screech's voice to drop, that's why.
** The two kids from ''Good Morning Miss Bliss'' who did ''not'' carry over to ''Saved By The Bell'', Max Battimo and Heather Hopper, were 14 and 12 respectively.
** Mario Lopez (Slater) started out at age 16, graduating at 20; Tiffani(-Amber) Thiessen started at 15, making her the same age as Gosselaar and Voorhees. The eldest was Elizabeth Berkley, 17 when she started and 21 when it ended.
* The ''other'' kids on ''[[
** In general, [[Disney Channel]] is pretty good at averting this trope.
** Averted in ''[[
* [[Super Sentai]] often averts the trope: post-2000 series rarely feature main cast members older than 22-23 maximum, save for some [[Sixth Ranger
** In ''[[
** Possibly the most hilariously exaggerated inversion
* Christina Applegate was 15 years old and playing a 15-year-old in the first season of ''[[Married...
** David Faustino was much the same, playing a 12-year-old boy when he was in fact 12 years old. In both cases, the characters aged at the same rate as the actors. Of course, while Kelly was repeatedly stated to have an active sex life, Applegate wasn't actively portrayed making out on camera until after she turned 18.
* ''[[The Bill]]'' features a 19-year-old character, played by an actress who was 17 when she started filming.
* [[Sarah Michelle Gellar]] was 16 when she started playing Erica Kane's long lost daughter Kendall Hart on ''[[All My Children]]'', who was in her twenties. It should be said though that her character's age was a [[Retcon]] from 16 because of the continuity errors it created.
* ''[[Freaks and Geeks]]'' had a good percentage of its cast close to or of the high school age (24-year-old Linda Cardellini and 21-year-old [[James Franco]] being exceptions). John Francis Daley, playing a very small and scrawny 14-year-old, was the same age as his character.
** Also, in ''[[
* ''[[Firefly]]'' has twenty-year-old [[Jewel Staite]] playing Kaylee, who is implied to be older than 17-year-old River (played by [[Summer Glau]], who IRL was a year older than Jewel).
** There's also a 27-year-old [[Sean Maher]] playing Simon, who's around 25, going by the age of the child actor who portrayed a young Simon.
*** And a brief look at Mal's ID shows us that he's 49, despite the fact that [[Nathan Fillion]] was only 31 when the show went on air. Fans are still divided over whether this means people in the future age really slowly, or someone just got the last two digits of Mal's year of birth mixed up.
* ''[[
* On ''[[That
** The story goes that when asked how old she was, Mila said, "I'll be 18 on my birthday." She just didn't say which birthday. The producers liked her so much that they decided to keep her even when they found out the truth.
** When the show started, [[
* In ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', Jared Padalecki and [[
** However, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays their father, is only 12 years older than Ackles (something Padalecki and Ackles used to tease him about). This begins to border on squick for those who also watch ''Grey's Anatomy'', considering Jensen Ackles (his son) and Katherine Heigl (his girlfriend) are the same age.
** Played straight with Teen!Dean in "After School Special," but inverted with Teen!Sam: the actor playing 14-year-old Sam played 8-year-old in "A Very Supernatural Christmas" a year before. The kid was about 12 years old or maybe 13, but very small for his age.
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** Not many, since the age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16.
** The American version landed in hot water with the [[Moral Guardians]] for casting teenaged actors. Most notably, a nude scene was shot involving a 17-year-old actor... and then the producers realized that [[Squick|it was child porn.]]
* ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'' featured 33-year-old Lauren Graham as 32-year-old Lorelai Gilmore, and 18-year-old (at the time of casting) [[Alexis Bledel]] as 16-year-old Rory Gilmore.
* Lucy Griffiths, who played Marian in the BBC's 2006 version of ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'' was 18 and playing a 21-year-old character in the first series.
* On ''[[The Wire]]'', Jermaine Crawford (Duquan "Dukie" Weems), Maestro Harrell (Randy Wagstaff) and Michael B. Jordan (Wallace) were the same ages as their characters (15, 14, and 16 respectively).
* Many [[
** Notably, ''[[The Adventures of Pete and Pete]]'' actually paid attention to how old the characters were and raised their ages accordingly and the producers later commented that the kids essentially grew up on the set because they'd been doing the shorts and television series for so long.
** ''[[
** Melissa Joan Hart was fifteen when she started playing [[Clarissa Explains It All|Clarissa Darling]], and her character aged up accordingly.
* Claire in ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' was 17 years old - and played by 16-year-old (when the series started) [[Hayden Panettiere]] - until the writers noticed fans enjoying the chemistry displayed between Claire and 26-year-old Peter and writers docked her age down one or two years to make them less comfortable with the pairing until [[The Reveal]] of {{spoiler|Peter and Claire being related.}}
** The kids who play Molly Walker and Micah Sanders are about the same age as their characters, or at least they ''were'' until the show took some time off. Micah is supposed to be eleven, and the actor is now fourteen, which is very noticeable as puberty has begun to kick in and his voice changed. Deepest voice on an eleven year old ever.
* In ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]'' the actors playing the kids were all of appropriate age: Zachary Ty Bryan (Brad) was the same age as his character, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Randy) was a year older than his character and Taran Noah Smith (Mark) was a year older than his character.
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' had [[Michael Cera]] and [[Alia Shawkat]] at almost the exact age of 14-15.
** Of course, now [[The Movie]] is in the works, so one wonders if this will slip into the non-exception category (Cera is 21 and Shawkat is 20 right now).
* Tyler James Williams, the young Chris Rock on ''[[
** Not to mention one of the early jokes of the show was that Chris' younger brother was taller than him (mirroring Chris Rock's real life younger brother who grew taller than him at an early age). After puberty, Williams was much taller than the other actor, not to mention his constant bully (though the bully remained much bulkier than the skinny Williams).
* Holly Tyler of ''[[
** In ''[[What a Girl Wants]]'', Bynes was a sixteen-year-old playing a seventeen-year-old.
* [[Neil Patrick Harris]] was more or less the same age as his character when he was in ''[[
** Harris was in fact, the same age as Doogie. He was only about 3 months older than his character.
*** However, Max Casella was 22 years-old when he began playing 16-year-old Vinnie.
* Most of the ''[[
** In fact, even though only two years of college are shown, it is strongly implied that at least three years have passed; Eric, Jack, and Rachel are all graduating despite (apparently) being Juniors. This makes Maitland Ward, who joined in the sixth season at age 21, yet another [[Averted Trope|aversion]].
** The reason
* Willa Holland really was fourteen when she played fourteen-year-old Kaitlin Cooper on ''[[The OC]]''. Actually, she didn't turn fourteen until just after her first episode ''aired'', but that's fine because [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome|Kaitlin was eleven two seasons earlier, anyway.]]
** Mischa Barton was 17 when Marissa was 16 in the first season.
* ''[[Malcolm in
** At least later on. At first, Francis was 15 and at military school, and the younger three brothers were in elementary school. But then the producers had to tweak things when the teen actors couldn't maintain the appearance of being pre-teen.
** Invoked in one episode, an adult woman in her early 20s poses as a student in order to bust drug dealers. Nobody is fooled.
* ''[[Growing Pains (TV)|Growing Pains]]'' had their [[Cousin Oliver]] characters played by actors around their ages. By the final season in 1991, [[Ashley Johnson]] was eight, playing the [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome|suddenly six-year-old Chrissy Seaver]]. Luke Brower was fifteen years old, played by sixteen-year-old [[Leonardo
* Matthew in ''[[One Life to Live]]'' is canonically about a year ''older'' than actor Eddie Alderson.
* Richard [[
** The whole Castle family falls under this trope. The actors portraying Richard Castle and his mother ([[Nathan Fillion]] and Susan Sullivan) were 37 and 66 when filming began. That makes Castle a young father, but it does work out.
* ''[[Lie to Me (TV series)|Lie to Me]]'': Cal Lightman's daughter is 15/16; the actress playing her 18.
* Although the flagship character of ''[[
* A deleted scene from the [[Pilot]] of ''[[
** Gillian Anderson was actually four full years younger than her character on ''The X-Files''. She lied to the producers of the show to say she was 27, to make her seem more credible as an FBI agent with a medical degree.
** David Duchovny was only a year older than his character, Mulder.
* New Zealand series ''[[
* The Canadian TV series ''Ramona'', based on the ''[[Ramona Quimby]]'' books, subverted this surprisingly well. Ramona is 8 years old and in third grade. So is her actress. ([[Ramona and Beezus (
* ''[[
* ''[[The George Lopez Show]]'' averts this with Max, who is played by Luis Armand Garcia. They are both the same age. Played somewhat straight with Carmen (Masiela Lusha), in that Masiela Lusha was 17 at the start of the show and Carmen was supposed to be 13-14.
* All characters on ''[[The Wonder Years]]'' had ages to match their roles, with star Fred Savage being 11 years old when the show first began. Following this trope, Fred Savage has had trouble finding work as an adult after his lauded childhood acting career.
* ''[[Pretty Little Liars (TV series)|Pretty Little Liars]]'' [[Averted Trope|averts]] this with Sasha Pieterse who began playing the role of [[Alpha Bitch|Alison DiLaurentis]] at age 14, one year ''younger'' than the character. As [[Wikipedia
* Averted in ''[[Earth 2]]''. 8
* The kids on ''[[
* Unlike almost all of her costars, Michelle Trachtenberg in ''[[
** Another aversion: at the time of Faith's first appearance in
* ''[[Skins]]'' has mostly averted this trope. As a rule, most of its main characters aged
* Taylor Momsen was fourteen when ''[[Gossip Girl]]'' premiered, same age as her character Jenny. This ended up pulling the plug on the planned Jenny/Nate romance in season two since Chace Crawford (in his twenties) wasn't comfortable with a storyline that would have him regularly making out with a then fifteen
* Most of the actors and actresses playing kids on ''[[The Secret World of Alex Mack]]'' were within a few years of their characters' ages.
* In ''[[
* In ''[[
* Inverted on ''[[
* On ''[[3rd Rock
* On ''[[South of Nowhere]]'' Chris Hunter was 18 at the time of filming playing the 17-18
* In the [[Made for TV Movie]] ''Birds Of Prey'' David Janssen plays an ex-WWII pilot who now flies a traffic helicopter. The film was made when Janssen was 41, and he was 14 when the war ''ended''!
=== Theater ===
* John Owen Jones was 26 when he first assumed the role of Jean Valjean in ''[[Les Misérables (
* Similarly, this has been a respected convention for the casting of the very aged [[
** Sir [[Laurence Olivier]] at 39, then again at 75.
** David Warner at 64.
** [[James Earl Jones]] at 43.
** Sir Donald Wolfit throughout his (and the) 50s.
** [[
** Lee J. Cobb at 57.
** Sir Ian Holm at 67.
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** Nonso Anozie at 22.
** Sir John Gielgud at 26, 46, 51, and finally at 90(!), as part of an all-star radio production.
* Both ''[[
** Ditto for certain stage productions of ''[[
* Amy Nuttall was 16 when playing Christine in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' on the West End, and to date is the youngest leading actress ever featured in the London production.
=== Other ===
* Incredibly, Maria Callas began her opera career at the age of 15, as the leading lady in ''Cavallera rusticana'', which is about a young, knocked-up village girl, probably about 15-16. Since it requires performers who can sing over an orchestra, this trope doesn't have many opera exceptions, folks.
* Although there is one other noticeable aversion in the field of
* Lampshaded by
* This one is in "Other" because it derives from Theatre, Live-Action Film, ''and'' Television: Patty Duke in three separate productions of ''The Miracle Worker''. Duke was able to play Helen Keller on Broadway well into her teens, and played her again in the 1962 film adaptation, partly because she was very small: even in adulthood she
* The Full Cast Audio book recordings, which was founded by Bruce Coville, ''always'' uses age-appropriate voice actors for every book they record.
* In the notorious "[[Friday (
* In the music video for [[
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* School plays and musicals usually invert or avert this.
* Traci Lords did adult entertainment when she was a minor. She did (and does) look older than most people who were born in 1968. When the feds tried to bust the smut peddlers for molesting innocent Traci, the case fell apart when the government admitted that it, too, had been fooled when Lords traveled to Europe on a fake passport.
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[[Category:Older Than Television]]
[[Category:Dawson Casting]]
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