Dawson Casting - Television Tropes & Idioms

This is just like The O.C., except without twenty-five year old teenagers and thirty-five year old parents
— Jack, Will and Grace

Can somebody tell tell me what's the point of making a fake ID to prove you're over 18 when you're so obviously 24?
— The Nostalgia Critic, "Saved by the Bell"

Bill: So they're in "high school", huh?
Mike: Well, a special high school for people with that rapid aging disease...
— Rifftrax of the short "How Much Affection"

High school students in television look nothing like high school students in real life, for one good reason: they're played by actors who are up to years old. This dates back to the earliest days of Hollywood, if not further, making it Older Than Television.

There are many reasons for this. One is that the vast majority of professional actors are twenty and up anyway, so if you hold an audition for a teen role, nine out of ten of the actors you see will be an inappropriate age, and they'll be the ones with good CVs. A twenty-four-year-old actor is far less likely to drop out after a year to focus on their education than a legitimate high schooler. There are a whole string of laws that apply to child actors, including (in the UK and the USA) education requirements and night shoot and work hours restrictions. Another reason is that puberty tends to be extremely fickle; a cute fourteen-year-old can transform into a gawky, gangly sixteen-year-old with rather shocking celerity.

This trope also allows said "teenagers" to perform various acts on camera that would be highly illegal if they were actually underage. (It's generally illegal in the U.S. to do anything that even simulates sex on film unless everyone involved is 18 or older)

This ought to be horribly distracting, but by and large television audiences have learned to manage. It can sometimes result in a paradoxical effect: teens that look more like actual teens (either with real teenage actors or in animation) are described as looking "too young" (see Reality Is Unrealistic). Conversely, actors in their early-to-mid-twenties, especially those who make their name in these kinds of shows, often have difficulty being taken seriously playing characters their own age.

This happens far most often when dealing with teenage characters in the range of 14-18 years old, especially in Dramatic shows. If younger, casting usually tries for children actors, and if older it is simply far less noticeable. Most Comedy based shows will avert this.

Very specific actors can pull it off, sometimes with appropriate clothing, hairstyles, makeup and mannerisms.

Named for Dawsons Creek, which was notorious for it — James Van Der Beek (20), Katie Holmes (18) and Joshua Jackson (19) playing 15-year-olds (at the time of the pilot's filming).

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. Also, examples should be a truly dramatic difference; an 18-year-old actress playing a 16-year-old isn't Dawson Casting.

A good yardstick is twenty-year-olds do not physically look like fourteen-year-olds even if they act like it.

Compare Playing Hamlet. Contrast Playing Gertrude. See also Artistic Age for an intentional drawn equivalent.