Dawson Casting: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"This is just like ''[[The OC]]'', [[Dissimile|except without 25-year-old teenagers and 35-year-old parents.]]"''

|'''Jack''', ''[[Will and Grace]]''}}

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''.

 

 

{{examples}}

* [[Howard Stern]] in his film ''[[Private Parts]]'' played an 18-year-old version of himself... He was 42 at the time. The incongruity is extremely obvious when we first see him walking around campus, and Stern (as a [[Narrator]]) comments that "for this movie you've got to suspend disbelief."

* Ralph Macchio was in his early twenties when he first played the 15-year-old Daniel La Russo in ''[[The Karate Kid]]''. By the time the third movie came out, Macchio was still playing teen-aged Daniel despite being in his ''late'' twenties. (His boyish good looks and the fact that his voice remained in a higher register after breaking helped.)

* 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-old P.J. Soles. The sequel ''Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever'' also features a teen cast of twenty somethings.

* In the 1954 ''[[White Christmas]]'', 32-year-old Vera Ellen plays Judy Haynes; Judy's age is never expressly given, but based on comments made by other characters (she is repeatedly called "kid" and "little Judy"), that she orders a malted when the others order alcohol, and that 25-year-old Rosemary Clooney plays her ''older'' sister Betty, it appears that she's supposed to be about 19.

* 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-old Kaspar Hauser was played by 41-year-old street musician Bruno S. Herzog has commented that he was chosen for the role because his life had parallels with that of the historical Kaspar Hauser, and also because he gave the impression of being outsider to society at large, one that was a stranger to his own body.

* ''[[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter]]:'' Moaning Myrtle (a ghost who died in her teens) was played by then-''37-year-old'' [[Shirley Henderson]] in ''Chamber of Secrets'' (her being a ghost, her appearance thusly being quite worked-over already and somewhat obscured by the opticals involved, probably helped hide the fact).

* [[Michael J. Fox]] played the teen-aged Marty McFly of the ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]]'' films into his late twenties, having done the first film when he was twenty-three. The actors playing Marty's parents and Biff, appearing as teenagers in the 1955 scenes, had similar ages.

* Parodied in ''[[Scary Movie]]''. In a "If this were a movie" conversation, one character says "We'd be played by actors in their late 20s/early 30s". The characters then pause for a moment, letting the phrase sink in.

* 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 Bueller's Day Off]]'' merits note. Matthew Broderick was 24 at the time, Jennifer Grey (Ferris' younger sister) was 26, but Alan Ruck (Cameron) topped them both by turning ''thirty'' a few weeks after the film was released.

* Another really bad example comes from the rather poor film adaptation of the novel ''[[Flowers in the Attic]]'' by [[V. C. Andrews]], in which actors that look like adults are cast as characters who, in the book, were 14 and 12. This even [[Plot Hole|breaks the plot]]; the male lead is large enough to simply physically overpower his abusive grandmother while the rest of his siblings simply walk out the front door of the mostly empty mansion.

* ''[[The Graduate]]'' paired 30-year-old [[Dustin Hoffman]] as a recent college graduate, and 36-year-old Anne Bancroft as the middle-aged wife of his father's business partner. Not to mention 27-year-old Katharine Ross as her daughter Elaine.

* The four actors who played the supposedly high-school aged Juan Rico, Dizzy Flores, Carmen Ibanez, and Carl Jenkins in ''[[Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers]]'' were between 25 and 30 at the time.

* In the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'', most of the cast is semi-plausibly close to the ages of recent Starfleet Academy graduates. However, John Cho is 37 years old, playing the 21-year-old Sulu. Karl Urban is also 37, though he's closer to his character's official age of 30. And Zoe Saldana (Uhura) is 31.

* 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 (film)|Scream]]'' series stars an entire cast of mid-20's actors playing 17-year-old students. Neve Campbell and [[Rose McGowan]] at 23, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard at 26 (older than David Arquette, who plays the 25 year old Dewey) [[Drew Barrymore]] being closest to her characters age at 21 years old. Although considering the satiric nature of the film this was probably intentional.

** ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' has an excuse: the characters were originally intended to be high school seniors, as evidenced by the original plot for the two-part episode 'Doomsday' involving the Rangers going to Senior Prom. When the show became a hit, they needed to keep the characters around, so they refrained from actually giving ages for the Rangers in order to keep the high school setting as long as possible.

*** 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-old Madison in ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force|Mystic Force]]'', was 27 at the time of filming...

** Played straight and inverted in the case of Olivia Tennet (Dr. K) from ''[[Power Rangers RPM|RPM]]'', in which the 17-year-old actress (when production began) played her character at ages 14 (during a flashback in "Doctor K"), 18, 19 (as of "The Road to Corinth"), and then 20 (as of "If Venjix Won").

* 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.

* The [[Beastie Boys]]

* [[The Beach Boys]] continued to sing love songs to teenage girls even after they became middle-aged, bearded, creepy men. Not counting the unreleased track "Lazy Lizzy", in which Brian sings about stalking an underage girl, the most pedo-worthy track to appear on a Beach Boys disc was undoubtedly "Hey Little Tomboy" - made even worse by a bootlegged outtake in which the Boys seem bent on gang-raping the title character.

* At the age of 26, [[Katy Perry]] played a 13-year-old high school student in the music video of her song "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)".

* Several of [[Taylor Swift]]'s videos, such as "Fifteen" and "The Story of Us", in which she plays high schoolers. Minor examples earlier, as she wasn't that much older than her characters, but it's started getting played more and more straight as she gets older ([[Older Than They Look|though to her credit, she doesn't look it]]).

 

=== Other ===

* 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.

* 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:

* ''[[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.

 

=== [[Western Animation]] ===