Dawson Casting: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

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]].

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.

** 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]].

* Practically all Role Players cast their characters into age illogical celebrities.

 

 

== Film ==

* Inverted in ''[[Click]]'' where 19 year old Katie Cassidy plays the 27 year old version of Adam Sander's daughter

* 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.

* ''Female Trouble'' - Mink Stole, in her late 20s, plays a 14-year old, and it's heavily [[Lampshade|lamp shaded]].

* 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.

* 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 ''[[Peggy Sue Got Married]]'' 32-year old Kathleen Turner plays 40-year old Peggy Sue. So far, so good. [[Peggy Sue]] is then transported back to her senior year of high school, and Turner also plays the 18-year old version of Peggy Sue.

* The movie version of ''[[The Wiz]]'' has 33-year old Diana Ross managed to get herself cast as Dorothy, pushing out 20-year old Stephanie Mills (who was the stage Dorothy) in the process.

** Leslie Howard, at 43, played Romeo in a 1936 version and Juliet was played by 34-year old Norma Shearer). Even more geriatric was John Barrymore, Sr. as Mercutio, who was ''fifty-four'' at the time.

** 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 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.

** A convoluted example involves Tom Riddle, who [[Timeshifted Actor|appears as a 16-year old]] in two films made seven years apart. In ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets|Chamber of Secrets]]'', 23-year old Christian Coulson played Riddle. By the time ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince|Half-Blood Prince]]'' rolled around, Coulson was pushing 30 and [[The Other Darrin|the part was recast]] with actual 16-year old Frank Dillane.

** ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|Deathly Hallows Part 2]]'' features an inversion, where {{spoiler|the [[Distant Finale]] has everyone being played by the same actors as before, only with special-effects applied to try and make them ''look'' like they're in their late thirties despite only being in their early 20s.}}

* ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'':

** The BBC adaptation from 1995 included Julia Sawalha (then in her late twenties) as 15-year old Lydia Bennet.

** The 1940 adaptation plays this trope straight. 36-year olds [[Laurence Olivier]] and [[Greer Garson]] played 28-year old Mr. Darcy and 20-year old Lizzie respectively.

* Jake Gyllenhaal was 23 when he was cast as a teenager in the 2004 movie ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]''.

* ''Kidulthood'' stars Noel Clarke, who was 29 when playing the 18-year old leading man Sam. At 32, Clarke returned to play a 24-year old Sam in the sequel ''Adulthood''.

* ''[[Clueless]]'':

* [[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 old Moira Kelly as 17-year old Donna Hayward, and 27-year old Pamela Gidley as 17-year old Teresa Banks.

* ''[[Mean Girls]]'' had 25-year old [[Rachel McAdams]] and 21-year old [[Lacey Chabert]] and Lizzy Caplan playing [[High School]] Juniors. On the other hand, [[Amanda Seyfried]] and [[Lindsay Lohan]], both also playing 16-year olds, were 18 years old and 17 years old respectively. [[Amy Poehler]], who played McAdams' character's mother, is only six years older than she is.

* ''[[Carrie]]'':

* [[Tim Roth]] played a 19-year old serial killer in a TV movie ''Murder in the Heartland". He was 33 when it aired. Being short and thin probably helped but couldn't fully cover the age difference.

* In ''City of Ember'' one of the two 12-year old leads is played by Saoirse Ronan, who was 13 at the time of filming. The other is played by Harry Treadaway, who turned 23 during production.

* 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 old Jess in ''[[Bend It Like Beckham]]''.

* In the 1920 silent film ''Pollyanna'', 27-year old Mary Pickford plays a 12-year old girl.

** 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 old ''boy'').

** 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.

** 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]]'', [[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 old Tuesday Weld and ''38-year old'' Roddy McDowall.

* Richard Wilson was 21 when he played Mikey in ''[[The Proposition]]'', who is implied to be about 14.

** 37-year old Gene Hackman was originally cast as Bancroft's husband, but Mike Nichols decided he couldn't pull off the middle-aged look as well as she could and wound up recasting the role.

* 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.

* Most of the high school freshman class in ''[[Freedom Writers]]'' were played by actors ridiculously too old to be playing 14-year olds. The most prominently featured student was played by April L. Hernandez, who was fourteen ''in the time period the film is set''. This makes her just six years younger than [[Hilary Swank]], who played the teacher.

* 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).

* 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 old Summer Bishil played a 13-year old in ''[[Towelhead]]''. This is somewhat lampshaded by a line even featured in the trailer in when hearing her age a character responds "You look older." Somewhat justifiable in that there is no way such a young actress would ever be cast in a movie with its sexual content.

** In ''Halloween 4,'' Rachel was played by 25 year old Ellie Cornell, her boyfriend Brady was played by 24-year old Sasha Jensen, and Brady's mistress Kelly was played by 23-year old Kathleen Kinmont. In ''Halloween 5'', Rachel's friend Tina is played by 23-year old Wendy Kaplan, and the average age of Tina's other friends is 25.

** 14-year old Jamie Lloyd is played by 20-year old J.C Brandy in part 6.

** 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)

* Harold and Kumar in ''[[Harold and Kumar]] Go To White Castle''. Played straight with John Cho, who, at 30, played a character two years out of college - but averted with Kal Penn, who was a relatively age-appropriate 26. By the time the sequel came around, this trope was played straight with ''both'' actors (35 and 31 respectively, playing their characters at 24-25 since the action picks up right where the first film left off).

* 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 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.

* In ''[[Never Been Kissed]]''. [[Drew Barrymore]] plays a 25-year old who is pretending to be a high school student, and no one [[Older Than They Look|thinks she looks too old]]. In real life, Barrymore was 23 for the duration of filming. David Arquette, who plays her younger brother, is actually four years ''older'' than her.

** Averted with at least two of her fellow students - [[Leelee Sobieski]] and [[Jessica Alba]] were 15 and 17 respectively when the film was made.

* 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 ''[[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 old Eliza Doolittle.

* 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 old Ben Barnes was cast as the 17-year old titular prince. (He's 13 in the book.)

* ''Total Eclipse'' - 21-year old Leonardo DiCaprio as a teen poet.

* ''Marvin's Room'' - 22-year old Leonardo DiCaprio as a teen arsonist.

* 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.

* 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 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.

* Used distractingly in ''Running With Scissors'', in which the audience is expected to believe that 20-year old Joseph Cross is Augusten Burroughs at as young an age as about 13. [[Evan Rachel Wood]]'s character is supposed to be of a similar age, and she's no more convincing. Considering that neither of them look nor act at all like middle schoolers, what age they're supposed to be is straight-up confusing -- and then surprising, once Augusten is stated late in the film to be fourteen.

* ''[[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.

** 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 old kids who rob a bank. At the time, the actors were 15, 16, and 14, respectively.

* 21-year old Georgina Cates lied about her age and pretended to be a teenager in order to play a 16-year old in the film ''An Awfully Big Adventure''. It worked - the cast, crew and director fell for it. Possibly also a subversion, because when Cates first auditioned and gave them her real name and age, she was told she was too old for the role.

* ''Nowhere (1996)'' by Gregg Araki - [[Mena Suvari]] and Joshua Gibran Mayweather were both teens, but the rest were between 20 and 40 years old.

* [[Selma Blair]] was subject to this a lot.

** ''Debutante'' - 26-year old [[Selma Blair]] plays a 17-year old.

** ''Girl (1998)'' - 26-year old [[Selma Blair]] plays bookish high school senior Darcy.

** ''[[Legally Blonde (Film)|Legally Blonde]]'' - 30-year old [[Selma Blair]] plays a college student.

** For more, see the Television section.

* 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 old [[Juliette Lewis]] plays Mallory Knox from ages 15 to 19 (according to the novelization)

* ''The Other Sister'' - 26-year old Juliette Lewis as 18-year old Carla Tate.

** 16-year old Nancy Thompson (played by 20-year old Heather Langekamp) fights Freddy, goes without sleep, and has to deal with the death of her teen friends who are also played by people in their 20s. The stress shows on her face, and she looks in the mirror and proclaims, [[Lampshade Hanging|"God, I look 20 years old."]]

** 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.

* ''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.

* ''Devil in the Flesh'' - 25-year old [[Rose McGowan]] plays a teenaged murderess.

* ''Dean Koontz's Phantoms'' - 25-year old [[Rose McGowan]] plays a character that was 14 in the book.

* ''Drive Me Crazy:'' 23-year old [[Melissa Joan Hart]] stars as a teenager with prom problems. Co-starring 23-year old Adrian Grenier as her high school sweet heart.

* ''[[A Cinderella Story]]'':

*** Played very straight ''A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song'', with 21-year old (at the time of filming) Lucy Hale playing the 17-year old heroine.

* ''[[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 old [[Neve Campbell]] and 27-year old [[Denise Richards]] as 18-year old high school seniors.

* In 1983, 21-year old [[Tom Cruise]] played a teen in four different movies, ''[[The Outsiders]], Losin' It, [[Risky Business]], and All The Right Moves.''

* [[Alexis Bledel]] was 21 years old when she played 15-year old Winnie in ''[[Tuck Everlasting]]'' (the character had already been aged from a child to a teen in order to accommodate her.) Bledel is now 29 and set to play a teenager in ''Violet & Daisy'' - she is thirteen years older than her actually teenage co-star [[Saoirse Ronan]].

** 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).

* 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.

* ''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!

* 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 old is much easier than playing a drag queen.

** Don't forget the film for ''Disco Pigs'', where Cillian played a 16-year old when he was 24 at the time. It is rather justifiable, as he actually looked very convincing, and he did play the character in the stage play version at 19 years of age.

* 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.

* ''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.

* ''[[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 old playing a 37-year old (not a stretch). Danny Aiello was 54, playing a 42-year old. [[Nicolas Cage]] was just 23, and although the age of his character is never mentioned outright in the film, the plot (involving his romance with Cher's character) just wouldn't make much sense unless we assume he's significantly older, at least mid-30ish.

** 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

** Inverted: On the other hand, Channing's character accuses another student of looking too young: this particular character is indeed a 15-year old actor... playing a senior in high school.

** Played straight: With the rest of the "high-schoolers" cast, especially the main drug dealer played by 26-year old Dave Franco which if he played one of the title characters he would still be playing this trope slightly straight as Tatum and Hill's characters graduated in 2005 Franco likely graduated in 2003 based on his age.

** 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).

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** 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 most jarring example from the series might have been when 27 year old Elizabeth Anne Allen played a 16 year old cheerleader (then again Allen is actually several months ''younger'' than Carpenter).

** Also Oz and Jonathan, played by 23-year olds [[Seth Green]] and Danny Strong. Also appearing was 26-year old Jason Hall as 18-year old Devon. Though the show did feature 18-year old Mercedes McNab as a teenaged Harmony later in its run.

** 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

* 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.

* 23-year old Lauren Ambrose plays highschool-aged Claire from ''[[Six Feet Under]]''.

* Senta Moses is an actress who is very short and has very curly hair... which contributed to her playing a 17-year old at age ''27'' on the show ''[[Bull]]''. She wasn't alone on this part, however: Her 16-year old brother was played by 25-year old Fred Koehler.

** 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 old Majandra Delfino and Emilie de Ravin. Shiri Appleby, Nick Wechsler and Katherine Heigl were 20, Brendan Fehr and Colin Hanks were 21 and Jason Behr was a whopping 25 years old when the first season premiered.

** 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 old Lex. It doesn't seem so bad once you get out of the teen years.

*** Sam Jones III (Pete Ross) was also 18 at the start.

* 25-year old John Hensley playing 16-year old Matt on ''[[Nip Tuck]]'' (made glaringly obvious off-screen when Hensley began dating Joely Richardson, the actress, only 13 years his senior IRL, who played his mom on the show). Also made glaringly obvious when he started getting a receding hairline.

* ''[[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.

** 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 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).

** 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 contemporaries -- again, as noted above, played by people in their 20s). Then again, Seyfried's voluptuous figure (which the writers and directors were not afraid to draw attention to) helped her look more developed than Bell, even though Bell's face was more mature. Which is interesting in light of Seyfried's role in ''[[Mean Girls]]'' (see above), made the same year.

** 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:

*** 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.

** 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.

* 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}}

** 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 old Greg Finley playing a high school sophomore).

** Lampshaded in the TV version of ''[[Ten Things I Hate About You]]''. The overprotective father refers to Patrick as "your friend with the disturbingly deep voice who looks much older than seventeen." His actor, Ethan Peck, is 21 years old. In this case, the whole casting thing doesn't really work, since he does indeed look like a college student.

*** Indeed, the only teenage role actually played by a teenager is 16-year old Bianca, played by 18-year old Meaghan Martin.

** The four main teen characters on ''[[Make It or Break It]]'' are played by actresses between the ages of 20 and 25.

** ''[[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.

** ''[[ANT Farm]]'''s cast members all fall in this: China Anne McClain (age 12), Sierra McCormick (age 13), and Jake Short (age 14) play 11-year old Freshmen, and Allie DeBerry (age 16) is just one age up compared to her character Paisley, who's age 15 in the show.

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

** 26-year old [[Sophie Aldred]] as 16-year old Ace.

** The new series two-parter The Doctor Dances/The Empty Child has a subversion. {{spoiler|Nancy, played by 21-year old Florence Hoath, appears to be about 16, having a 5-year old [[Creepy Child|"little brother"]] and helping out a band of homeless children. The Doctor realizes she is actually about twenty, old enough to be the boy's mummy.}}

* ''[[K 9]]'' features 19-year old Keegan Joyce as 14-year old Starkey, 16-year old Philippa Coulthard as 14-year old Jorjie Turner, and 20-year old Daniel Webber as 15-year old Darius Pike.

** 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.

** 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.

**** 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.

* 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''.

** 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."

** There was a heavy dose of [[Dawson Casting]] for most of the cast, especially in the later seasons. The book establishes Hawkeye as 28 years old, but TV-Hawkeye was played by Alan Alda, born in 1936 -- 36 when the series started (which would have made Hawkeye of draft age during WWII), 47 by the time it ended.

*** 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 show -- reflecting the effects of the stress and horror of war. A healthy, 28-year old actor wouldn't visibly age much in three years, but a stressed, overworked, mentally frayed, constantly terrified 28-year old frontlines army surgeon would take about three years to age as much as a healthy, 36-year old actor would in eleven years.

** The [[Ripped from the Headlines]] (sort of) precursor of the above, an adult writer posed as a teenager in order to sell her scripts; naturally this was made into TV movie.

** 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}}.

*** 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 [[Dawson Casting]] in the Original Series might be Chekov, who was supposed to be 21 years old when 31-year old Walter Koenig joined the show in 1967.

** 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]] [[Dawson Casting]]: at the beginning of the series, Elizabeth Bellamy is 17, played by 26 year old Nicola Pagett. But there are frequent [[Time Skip|Time Skips]] forward, making the character around 29 at her final episode.

** 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.

** 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.

* ''[[Party of Five]]'' had the (then) 26-year old Scott Wolf and 20-year old Neve Campbell playing the respectively 16- and 15-year old Bailey and Julia. On the other hand 11-year old [[Lacey Chabert]] (Claudia) and 16-year old [[Jennifer Love Hewitt]] (Sarah) were the same ages as their characters.

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in season 3 where Bailey's friend, seeing his fake ID, was very surprised that anyone would believe he's 27.

** 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.

* 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 old Danielle Van de Kamp and 24-year old Julie Mayer are now several years ''older'' than the actresses playing them (19-year old Joy Lauren and 18-year old Andrea Bowen).

* The television version made in Italy in the '70s of the book ''Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca''(''Johnny Whirlwind's Diary'') have 30-year old people as 6-year old children.

{{quote| '''Joey''': Come on, am I 19 or what?<br />

'''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.

* The WB's ''Jack & Bobby'' featured 24-year old Matt Long as 15-year old Jack McCallister. Made glaringly obvious by the fact that Logan Lerman, who played Jack's 13-year old brother Bobby, was actually 12 at the time of filming.

** 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!

* The plot of ''[[Caprica]]'' revolves partially around two 16-year old girls. Of the actresses who play them, one was 21. The other was 23.

* On the UK "dramedy" ''[[Shameless]]'' 21-year old Fiona Gallagher was portrayed by then 33-year old Anne-Marie Duff. In an interview, the actress herself admitted that she was surprised to have been offered the role, as she thought she was "too old to be seen for it."

** 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 old Eileen Walsh as teenage Crispina.

* 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.

** The episode "Not Cancer" had an ''incredibly'' obvious example, with an alleged 4-year old (who was only seen briefly) being played by a kid who was clearly, like, eleven.

* 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 old "6th year senior" who has been repeatedly flunked because he's the only one who can do a particular dance move.

** [[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.

** 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.

** 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.

* 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...

** 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.

** 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 old L/Cpl. Jack Jones (having served in the Mahdist War, the Boer Wars and [[World War One]]) was played by Clive Dunn, 48.

** 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 ''[[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]].

* More [[Selma Blair]] examples:

** ''[[The Adventures of Pete and Pete]]'' almost avoided this until 23-year old Selma Blair arrived in the episode "Das Bus."

** Inverted in Disney's adaptation for ''[[The Mickey Mouse Club]]'', in which the actors Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk were younger than the books -- 12 and 11.

* ''[[Boston Public]]''

* ''[[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.

* [[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.

* 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.

** 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.

* 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 old Jessica Brown Findlay. Since the show's time [[Dashed Plotline|progresses considerably faster than real time]], this doesn't last; by the end of season 2, Sybil has actually passed Findlay's real age.

* In the miniseries ''Love, Lies and Murder'', a woman is murdered and two teenage girls are involved. 24-year old Sheryl Lee plays 17-year old Patti Bailey, and 23-year old Moira Kelly plays 14-year old Cinnamon Brown.

 

 

== 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

* Indigo Girls

 

 

== Other ==

 

 

== Theater ==

** 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 this year. The person who played Mimi was Annie Crummer. Granted, Annie Crummer is awesome, but she's in her forties. She's more than twice the age Mimi is in the production. Good grief.

** This happens with almost any teenage character in musical theatre, most notably:

*** 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.

* 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.

*** 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 [[Squick|squicky]].

** 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)

** 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.

** 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 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 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

* 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.

* The 2004 Off-Broadway version of 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.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

 

 

== Web Original ==

* Mocked in ''[[A Very Potter Musical]]'' with CLEARLY College aged Darren Criss stating "I'm just a 12 year old kid".

** 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.

 

 

* 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. [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.

* 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|Cosplayers]] 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.

** [[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.

 

== Film ==

** 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 11th, 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.

** 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.

* 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 ''[[Ten 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).

* 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 10th, 1946, making her 14 for the duration of filming.

** 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).

* 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.

** 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.

* In ''Somewhere'', 11-year-old Cleo is played by 11-year-old Elle Fanning (she was 12 by the time of its release).

* ''[[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 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.

** 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!

* ''[[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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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 Age 14-17 (most famously ''[[The Blue Lagoon]]''), appeared in a variety of R-rated films that involved frontal nudity. In each case, an over-20 body double covered those moments for her.

* 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.

 

 

* The teens on ''[[Degrassi]]'' are all played by real teens -- but they're much more attractive than the typical bunch of high schoolers (see [[Hollywood Homely]]).

** 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.

** 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.

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

* [[Super Sentai]] often averts the trope: post-2000 series rarely feature main cast members older than 22-23 maximum, save for some [[Sixth Ranger|Sixth Rangers]] who were older than the main heroes. Several recent series have had 15 to 17-year-old characters played by actors of the same age and even teenagers playing characters ''older'' than themselves - ''[[Samurai Sentai Shinkenger|Shinkenger]]'' has 14-year-old Runa Natsui as 17-year-old Kaoru. There are however a few examples of the trope played straight, such as ''[[Tensou Sentai Goseiger|Goseiger]]'' where 20-year-old Mikiho Niwa plays 17-year-old Moune.

** 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.

* In ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'', 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.

** 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.

** 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.

** 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.

** 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.

* 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).

** 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.

** 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.

** 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).

** 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).

** 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.

** 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 [[Dawson Casting]] exists was perfectly demonstrated in the episode "Better than the Average Cory", where we meet 13-year-old artist Alexandra Nechita ([[Special Guest|playing herself]]), who strikes up a friendship with Cory's little sister Morgan, who is the same age (and played by also 13-year-old Lindsay Ridgeway). Nechita looks several years older than Ridgeway, to the point that [http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/bmw/index.php?episode=96 one reviewer] [[Reality Is Unrealistic|could not believe they were the same age, even though they were]].

* 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.

** 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.

* Matthew in ''[[One Life to Live]]'' is canonically about a year ''older'' than actor Eddie Alderson.

** 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.

* Although the flagship character of ''[[Caprica]]'' (Zoe Graystone) is played by someone about six years older than the character, Tamara is herself a semi-exception. [[Genevieve Buechner]] ''is'' older than Tamara Adama but she's much closer than her colleagues to her character's age, being only 18 while her character is about 15.

** 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.

* ''[[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.

** 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).

* ''[[Skins]]'' has mostly averted this trope. As a rule, most of its main characters aged 16-18 have been played by actors that same age or a tiny bit older, 20 at the most. However, Series 6's guest character Poppy Champion was meant to be 13 but was played by 19 year-old Holly Earl, who was therefore older than a lot of the main cast (but was arguably more convincing in her downplayed age than many examples of this trope), including Alo who she had a storyline with involving him having sex with her unaware of her age, dumping her instantly when he finds out, then being accused of paedophilia when she reports him out of anger.

* 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.

* On ''[[South of Nowhere]]'' Chris Hunter was 18 at the time of filming playing the 17-18 year old Glenn. It's notable because he was three years younger than the actress playing his younger sister.

* 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 ==

** 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.

** Nonso Anozie at 22.

** Sir John Gielgud at 26, 46, 51, and finally at 90(!), as part of an all-star radio production.

* 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.

 

* 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 opera -- Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. Tchaikovsky felt that older singers playing young, passionate lovers would cause people to be unable to take his opera seriously. He had students at the Moscow Conservatory put on the first performance of Eugene Onegin.

* 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 has never grown taller than five feet. Her height presented a particular challenge to the producers of the 1979 TV remake, in which she played Annie Sullivan, because she was cast opposite fifteen-year-old Melissa Gilbert -- confronting audiences with a seven-year-old Helen Keller who was ''[[Teens Are Short|taller than her teacher]]''.

* The Full Cast Audio book recordings, which was founded by Bruce Coville, ''always'' uses age-appropriate voice actors for every book they record.