Dawson Casting: Difference between revisions

# [[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 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.

# [[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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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 old does not physically look like a 14-year old.

* [[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.

** The eponymous character was a high school senior and portrayed by a 26-year old [[Sissy Spacek]], the same as P.J. Soles, who played Norma Watson. As well as the other teenagers, who were, oddly enough, only a few years younger than the actor playing Miss Collins.

** [[Angela Bettis]] was 29 when she portrayed Carrie in the remake.

* Parodied in ''[[Walk Hard]]'', where the 14-year old version of Dewey Cox is played by 42-year old John C. Reilly, and his 12-year old child bride Edith is played by 34-year old Kristen Wiig. The other students in the scene are a grab bag of realistic and hilariously inappropriate age. This scene was intentionally made even sillier by the fact that it is immediately preceded by 8-year old Dewey being played by actual 8-year old Conner Rayburn.

* 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 perhaps one of the most extreme examples of this trope, ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'' cast 22-year old Rose McIver as the character of Lindsey Salmon, who is supposed to be a 13-year old girl. The incongruity was made even worse by the fact that the character of Susie Salmon, who is Lindsey's 14-year old sister, went to 15-year old Saoirse Ronan, who actually looked like she was about the right age - so the audience was treated to a 22-year old playing the younger sister of an obviously-younger 15-year old. This lead to widespread confusion among audience members as to which sister was supposed to be older.

* The [[Carry On]] Film 'Carry On Camping' featured a school girl played by the 32 year old Barbara Windsor.

* In ''[[Goodfellas]]'', Henry and Tommy are played by child actors in the opening fifteen minutes, then the film jumps forward a few years and they are replaced by 34-year old Ray Liotta and 47-year old [[Joe Pesci]]. The story covers a period of nearly thirty years, so the choice of actors makes sense (it's considerably harder for someone in their twenties to make a believable 40-year old than in the opposite situation), but it does produce a bit of an "er, what?" moment when the narration identifies Ray Liotta as a "21-year old kid." Similarly Jimmy, played by [[Robert De Niro]] who was well into his forties by that point, is first introduced as a 28 year old.

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', Eowyn is played by the 30-year old Miranda Otto. Eowyn is twenty-three, at least in the book.

* ''[[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".

* 20-year old Sally Thomsett played 11-year old Phyllis in ''[[The Railway Children]]'', and was forbidden by contract to reveal her age during the making of the film.

* In ''[[Cherrybomb]]'', the three 16-year old protagonists are played by Kimberley Nixon (who was 22 at the time), [[Rupert Grint]] and [[Robert Sheehan]] (both of whom were 20). It generally gives the audience a bit of a jolt when Sheehan's character confirms how old they are towards the end of the movie, firstly because the cast are blatantly older than this, and secondly because we've just watched said character engage in a sex-and-drugs orgy and {{spoiler|violently murder someone.}}

* [[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.

* ''[[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.

** 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.

** 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

* 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 old Kristen Bell), Wallace Finnel (22-year old Percy Daggs III), Logan Echolls (22-year old Jason Dohring), and Dick Casablancas Jr. (23-year old Ryan Hansen).

** Which worked fine, except for [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0739544/ the episode] in season two, in which then 24-year old Kristen Bell and 25-year old Aaron Ashmore (Troy), playing high school seniors (~18), interact with [[Arrested Development (TV series)|18-year old Michael Cera and 17-year old Alia Shawkat]]... who were playing college students. One of them at least in his sophomore year, as he was acting as a tour guide to profros. That was sort of disorienting.

** There was also Charisma Carpenter who played the 25-year old Kendall when she was 35 and clearly looked like she was in her thirties. The show was not above indulging in a little meta humour about all this:

{{quote|'''Duncan:''' She's like our age.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' had numerous examples:

** 23-year old Carol Ann Ford as 15-year old Susan Foreman (though she is a [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|Time Lord]]).

** 25-year old Jackie Lane as 18-year old Dodo Chaplet.

** 21-year old Wendy Padbury as 15-year old Zoe Heriot (just to add to the confusion, according to [[The Brigadier]] she looks "about 19").

* 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 ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'' fame. He was already 27 when playing the teenaged Radar, and continued the role well into his 40s. Burghoff, however, had such a childish frame and voice, that little besides his thinning hairline betrayed his true age. The producers tried hard to get him to keep his hat on in later episodes.

* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Law & Order: Special Victims Unit|Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' which featured an adult conwoman who posed as a teenager in several different high schools {{spoiler|to the point of having sex with her teenaged boyfriends, and had her current lover killed when he found out. The actress in question is actually younger than the role she was cast in, she was 26 and the character was 28}}. As many other cases, the plot was [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: [http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2010/11/fake-teens-iv-serial-teen-treva.html see it here.]

** In an episode of ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' with a similar plot, the female murderer is played by a 20 year old actress. The character is a 26 year old woman pretending to be a 16 year old girl.

** [[Wil Wheaton]] was 15 when playing a 15-year old [[Creator's Pet|Wesley Crusher]]. ''[[Star Trek]]'' in general has avoided this with the child characters, with several recurring children on ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'' being played by the appropriate age.

*** 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 [[Star Trek (film)|2009 movie]] retcons this by giving him a birthdate that would have made him 26 when he debuted in the show.

* 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}}.

** 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 old Bodie Broadus on ''[[The Wire]]''. Julito McCullum was 17 when his character (Namond Brice) was 14, and Tristan Wilds was 18 when his (Michael Lee) was 14. Other characters were exceptions to this trope (see below).

** 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.

** 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 old Katie McGrath playing the 21-year old Princess Margaret (though she is 25 by the end of the episode). More extreme is the 35-year old Emilia Fox playing the 25-year old Queen Elizabeth II.

** 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

* Then-18-year old Olivia Burnette was cast as a preteen Justine O'Neil in the miniseries ''The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years''. While someone of her petite height could plausibly have passed for someone younger, her... ''development'' made it painfully obvious she was well past puberty.

* All the older teenage characters in the HBO adaptation of ''[[Game of Thrones]]'', such as Jon Snow, Danaerys Targaryen, Robb Stark, Sam Tarly, Theon Greyjoy, Loras Tyrell, Gendry and for Season Two {{spoiler|Margaery Tyrell, as played by Natalie Dormer, and Brienne of Tarth, as played by Gwendoline Christie}}. The characters are all between 16 and 20 (aged up roughly two years from the books), the actors between 20 and 29.

* ''[[Maddigans Quest]]'' is full of this: Jordan Metcalfe and Rose McIver were 18 and played Timon, aged 15, Garland, 14, respectively. Olivia Tennet was 14 and Zac Fox was 15 when they played 11-year olds Lilith and Eden.

* ''The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries'' had Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy (24 and 18, when the series started filming) playing the [[Hardy Boys]], who were supposedly 17 & 16.

* ''[[Boston Public]]''

* In ''[[7th Heaven|Seventh Heaven]]'' Barry Watson was 22 when he started playing high school junior Matt Camden, though the rest of the actors playing the Camden kids were of the right age.

* ''[[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.

* Both averted and played straight in ''[[What I Like About You]]''. Extremely averted with Holly (who's in-universe birthdays were near her actress, Amanda Bynes'); played straight with Henry, Vince, and Gary, all of whom were played by actors who were 24/25 at the time of their introductions, and Tina, whose actress was 28 at the time of her introduction.

* [[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!

** 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 ''[[The Marriage of Figaro]]'', where you often have a 14-year-old boy being played by a 50-year-old woman.

* Presumably all productions of ''[[Peanuts|You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown]]''.

** 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)

* In ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'', eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Glinda and Fiyero were played by 35-year-old Kristin Chenoweth and 36-year-old Norbert Leo Butz. Then again, Kristin looks very young for her age, but not really Norbert.

** 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.

* In ''[[Blood Brothers (theatre)|Blood Brothers]]'', you get a single actor play a character from childhood to adult, i.e. Edward at 25 is played by the same guy who plays him at 8. You get used to it.

* 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.

* 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 IN GENERAL is an example of this trope: played straight or sometimes reversed

* 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.

* [[Cameron Crowe]] enrolled as a high school student at age 22, to research his book on teen life, called ''[[Fast Times at Ridgemont High]].''

** [[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.

=== Film ===

* Michelle Trachtenberg was in her late teens playing 18 year old Jenny in ''[[Eurotrip]]''.

** 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.

** Emma Watson actually started off younger than Hermione. In the first film, she was 10-years-old playing 11.

** 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.

* All the lead actors of ''[[10 Things I Hate About You]]'' were actual teenagers: 19-year-old [[Heath Ledger]] and 17-year-old [[Julia Stiles]], Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik (though the latter two play fifteen-year-olds).

* [[Lindsay Lohan]] is the same age as her characters in her early films, particularly ''[[Freaky Friday]]'' and ''[[Mean Girls]]''.

** 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]]''.

* ''[[Rebel Without a Cause]]'' is a partial exception; [[Natalie Wood]] and Sal Mineo were 16, portraying teens. [[James Dean]], however, was 24.

* 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.

* The live action adaptation of ''[[The Last Airbender]]'' both plays this straight and subverts it. Jackson Rathbone (Sokka) was 25 playing 15 and Dev Patel (Zuko) was 19 playing 16, but both Noah Ringer (Aang) and Nicola Peltz (Katara)were the same age as their characters during filming (12 and 14 respectively).

* 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).

 

=== Live-Action TV ===

** 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 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.

* Most of the original cast on ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' were close to age-correct, though there was a little leakage into the 20s by graduation from the portion of the cast not from the original ''Good Morning Miss Bliss'':

** 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.

** In general, [[Disney Channel]] is pretty good at averting this trope.

** Averted in ''[[Shake It Up]]'', where the characters are supposed to be in high school. In fact, leads [[Bella Thorne]] (Cece) and Adam Irigoyen (Deuce) were only 13 years old playing high school freshmen at the start of the series.

** In ''[[Tokumei Sentai Gobusters]]'', Ryuji is played at 28 years old by Ryouma Baba (who turned 27 soon after the start of filming) and at 15 years old by Koudai Matsuoka (a year younger than the character.)

* Christina Applegate was 15 years old and playing a 15-year-old in the first season of ''[[Married... with Children|Married With Children]]'' (her character's age was said to be 16 a few months before Christina herself, making it a rare case of a teen actor ''younger'' than her role).

** 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.

* ''[[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 ''[[Bones]]'', in which a now 24-year-old John Francis Daley plays 24-year-old [[Replacement Scrappy|wunderkind]] psychologist Lance Sweets.

** 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.

* ''[[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).

** 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, [[Laura Prepon]] and Wilmer Valderrama were also teens; however, they aged normally, while their characters did not.

** 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.

* Holly Tyler of ''[[What I Like About You]]'' was exactly the same age as her portrayer Amanda Bynes (starting at 16 in the pilot), AND aged in real time to boot (both were nearly 20 in the finale).

** In ''[[What a Girl Wants]]'', Bynes was a sixteen-year-old playing a seventeen-year-old.

** 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 ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' cast (with the already-mentioned exception of Trina McGee) were fairly close to the ages of the characters they portrayed. In the first season, Will Friedle was 17 and playing a 15-year-old and 11-year-olds Cory, Shawn, and Topanga were portrayed by Ben Savage (13), Rider Strong (13), and Danielle Fishel (12). But the timeline actually moves ''faster'' in the ''BMW'' universe than in real life: The gang takes five years to graduate high school instead of seven, making Savage and Strong the same ages as their characters (and Fishel a year ''younger''). Matthew Lawrence joined the cast in the fifth season at age 17, playing Shawn's older brother, despite being two months younger than Strong.

** 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]].

* 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.

* ''[[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.

* Averted in ''[[Earth 2]]''. 8 year old Uly Adair and 10 year old True Danziger were played by actors aged 8 and 10 respectively.

* The kids on ''[[Full House]]''

* Unlike almost all of her costars, Michelle Trachtenberg in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' was the same age as her character, Dawn (14 years old when she first appeared on the show).

** Another aversion: at the time of Faith's first appearance in ''Faith, Hope and Trick'', [[Eliza Dushku]] was actually seventeen, Faith's age at the time (she had to apply for legal emancipation so she could work on the show unencumbered by child labour laws).

* 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 year-old.

* 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 ''[[Young Blades]]'', 16-year-old [[Robert Sheehan]] plays the nearly 16-year-old King Louis XIV.

* Inverted on ''[[The West Wing]]''. Elizabeth Moss is at least a year younger than Zoey Bartlet.

* On ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'', Tommy was [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]], but his fake Earth age was always the same as [[Joseph Gordon-Levitt]]'s real age (both were fourteen in the first season). Both his girlfriends were played by actresses (Shay Astar and Larisa Oleynik) born in the same year as him. However, there was the interesting situation of Joseph Gordon-Levitt looking younger than he actually was, especially in the early seasons. August looked like she was a good year or two older than Tommy, but actually Shay Astar is seven months ''younger'' than Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

=== 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.

* Lampshaded by the [[The Firesign Theatre|Firesign Theatre]] on their album ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers''; High school student Porgie Tirebiter's best friend Mudhead is in court, and the prosecutor (Porgie's dad) says "So you don't go to school?" to which Mudhead replies, "Hell, no! I'm thirty years old!"

* 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 (song)|Friday]]" video, 13-year-old Rebecca Black and her real-life friends (who are presumably in the 12-14 range) play characters who are at least 16, as ''one of them is driving a car''. This has been observed and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in many parodies.