History OlderThanTheyLook / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'': Akiko Narumi is 20 years old, but looks much younger, in part due to her height and childish behavior. Shotaro even mistakes her for a ''middle schooler'' in the first episode, and continues calling her that as an insult throughout the course of the show.
* ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'': Amatsu Gai is 45 years old but his appearance is within his 20s, which he overzealously guards and takes pride in by calling himself an ''eternally 24 years old''. A RunningGag is someone (like [[RobotGirl Is]]) pointing this discrepancy out, which he absolutely loathes.
* ''Series/KamenRiderSaber'': The Sword of Logos members Tetsuo, Ogami, and Sophia are shown to have all looked the same 15 years previously; it appears they are from Wonder World and age slowly. Ogami's canon age is given as 36, but a tie-in manga shows that he was a teenager in the 1980s and chronologically should be in his early 50s - suggesting he stopped aging after a point. It also raises the question of how old his son Sora, ostensibly around the age of eight or nine, really is.

* ''Famous in Love'' has teen movie star heartthrob Rainer told he can't do a stunt because he's only 20. Rainer responds he's really 23 and his mom/agent Nina "youthed me down" when he started out. This is the first clue to Alan figuring out that [[spoiler: Rainer is his son.]]

*** The enigmatic entity Q (John De Lancie) always appears as a 40-something human but as a member of the Q Continuum is, if you believe his claims, eternal, or at least as old as the universe itself. Of course, Q can alter his appearance to look like anything he wants to, including aging himself to match Picard's advanced age in ''Series/StarTrekPicard''.

* ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'':

** Lyandrin has a son who she cares for who's got old-age related disease while she looks at most fifty. From what she says he's in his late eighties, early nineties.
** Moiraine has a much younger sister (judging from the portrait depicting them years ago). However, she looks about in her early to mid forties, but her sister appears around twenty years older at least.

** PlayedForLaughs in ''Recap/RedDwarfThePromisedLand'' [[spoiler: Cat’s older brother BigBad Rodon is played by Ray Fearon who is several decades younger than Danny John Jules being in his 40s at the time of filming. Cat explains worrying about the very idea of having to do work [[YoungerThanTheyLook aged him beyond his years]]. There’s some FridgeLogic about Rodon’s age considering the aforementioned 200 year TimeSkip but it is hinted that Felis sapiens (aside from Cat) age slower than humans]].

* ''[[Series/TrappesGameShow Trapped]]'': Wiley Sneak, who demonstrates the challenges before the contestants do them, looks like a teenager, but is actually much older as he has been trapped in the Tower for a century at the start of the series.

** The titular Carly always looked at least a few years younger than she was. She was 13 in the first season and looked like she was about 11, and in the final season, she was around 18, but looked 15 at the absolute oldest. Even in the [[Series/ICarly2021 2021 revival]] when she's 26-going on-27, she still looks like she could pass for late teens or early twenties. (And keep in mind that Carly's actress, Creator/MirandaCosgrove, is a year older than her character.)

** Gregor Clegane was old enough to be knighted by Prince Rhaegar approximately 18 years before the first season and he is five years older than his brother. Hafthór Björnsson plays a character ten years older than he is while Rory [=McCann=] plays a character ''at least'' 15 years younger than he is. In reality, the older brother is ''20 years'' younger than the younger brother.

*** In the episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekS2E10JourneyToBabel Journey to Babel]]'', Spock's father Sarek appears to be a man of about 40 to 50 Earth years of age, but is actually much older, being over 102 years old in 2268 when the episode takes place. Dr. [=McCoy=] asks him why he had retired, noting that Sarek was still young for a Vulcan.[[note]]Original Sarek actor Mark Lenard was just six years older than original Spock actor Leonard Nimoy. Being only 43 when he first played Sarek, Lenard initially required a bit of makeup to make him appear to be in his 50s - namely a few grey hairs and some wrinkles around his eyes.[[/note]]

*** T'Pol from appears to be in her late twenties but, being a Vulcan, is actually much older. In the first season episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E23FallenHero Fallen Hero]]'' visiting Vulcan Ambassador V'Lar tells Archer and Tucker that she and T'Pol are the oldest people on the ''Enterprise'' at the moment, although T'Pol's age is kept ambiguous at that point. (V'Lar herself was already an adult and working as a diplomat when first contact was made with humans almost 90 years earlier). In the third season finale T'Pol mentions that she is 65 years old.

*** In the pilot episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E1EncounterAtFarpoint Encounter at Farpoint]]" Dr. [=McCoy=] arrives to inspect medical facilities on the new "Enterprise". Even though at that point he is 137 years old, his outward appearance is of someone around 90-100. They took a 67-year-old man and put him in a grey wig and some wrinkly eye-makeup, and had him walk slowly.
*** In the episode "Rascals", Keiko O'Brien is temporarily turned into an adorable 12-year-old. The fact that she still wants to be treated like a wife {{squick}}s Miles out a bit. Three other crewmembers - Picard, Guinan, and Ro - are similarly altered, but none of them are in relationships at the time, though they all happily exploit this trope to retake the ship from a hostile Ferengi takeover.
*** The O'Briens seem to get more than their fair share of this trope. There's another ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space 9]]'' episode, "Hard Time", where an alien race sentences O'Brien to a 21-year virtual prison sentence. He experiences all 21 years of his brutal, tortuous prison term in only a few days, making him mentally 21 years older; 21 really, really crappy years older. And even their daughter gets an OvernightAgeUp treatment due to a NegativeSpaceWedgie. This time, she actually spent those years growing up in a wilderness, and the O'Briens realize that the non-verbal wild-woman she has become cannot be undone, so they return her to the wilderness that has become her home. In doing so, this older Molly finds the young Molly minutes after she was lost in the anomaly and returned her to her parents, her correct age.
*** In the episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E21ThePerfectMate The Perfect Mate]]'' the Kriosian Ambassador Briam (Tim O'Connor) appears to be in his 60s or 70s in human years, but is actually over 200 years old.

* ''[[Series/WonderWoman1975 Wonder Woman]]'': Wonder Woman is over 2,500 years old, but looks like she's in her early 20s
--> '''Steve Trevor:''' You can't be more than 23 or 24
--> '''Wonder Woman:''' I will be 2,527 years old on my next birthday

** Eugene Victor Tooms from "Squeeze" and "Tooms" was a genetic mutant and SerialKiller who needed [[PickyPeopleEater human livers]] to hibernate. He looked to be in his late twenties in 1993, but his first murder had occurred in 1903.
** The CannibalClan in "Our Town" preserved their youthful look thanks to their [[IAmAHumanitarian special diet]].
** Alfred Fellig a photographer who unfortunately gained immortality by tricking Death from "Tithonus". He's over 200 but looks about 65.

** Cyrus from ''Series/OnceUponATimeInWonderland'' is at least a century old. Will was also a victim of thr aforementioned Dark Curse.

*** In the pilot episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E1EncounterAtFarpoint Encounter at Farpoint]]" Dr. [=McCoy=] arrives to inspect medical facilities on the new "Enterprise". Even though at that point he is 137 years old, his outward appearance is of someone a few decades younger.

** After taking the place of Varn as the [[WetwareCPU living CPU]] in the Great Machine of Epsilon III, the machine begins to rejuvenate him. By the following year he appeared as he did thirty years prior to entering the machine.[[note]]This was done because original Draal actor Louis Turenne was unavailable, leading to the role being recast with Creator/JohnSchuck playing Draal in the subsequent appearances. This was hand waved by Draal explaining that he had been rejuvenated by the Great Machine. When Schuck in turn was unavailable to reprise the role in the fourth season, producers toyed with recasting Draal with an even younger actor and explaining that the machine had further rejuvenated him to appear like he did as a young man.[[/note]]

*** Many of the children in the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E8Miri]]" are much, much older than they appear due to genetic manipulation their elders had performed on the planet to increase the life spans of everyone on the planet. By the time the ''Enterprise'' met Miri and the other children, she was just over 300 years old.

** In ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries The Original Series]]'' episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekS2E10JourneyToBabel Journey to Babel]]'', Spock's father Sarek appears to be a man of about 40 to 50 Earth years of age, but is actually much older, being over 102 years old in 2268 when the episode takes place. Dr. [=McCoy=] asks him why he had retired, noting that Sarek was still young for a Vulcan.[[note]]Original Sarek actor Mark Lenard was just six years older than original Spock actor Leonard Nimoy. Being only 43 when he first played Sarek, Lenard initially required a bit of makeup to make him appear to be in his 50s - namely a few grey hairs and some wrinkles around his eyes.[[/note]]

* ''Series/AlienNation'': Most adult Tectonese in the series are a fair bit older than they look due to their aging process slowing down once they reach about 20 Earth years old and having a median life expectancy of about 140 Earth years. In the episode "Fountain of Youth" George - who looks to be in his 30s - reveals to Matt that he's about 70 Earth years old and the station janitor Albert - who looks to be in his mid 20s - is actually 56 years old. The episode also reveals that Susan is 68. Matt asks if Emily is actually 35 but she is only 10, at which point George clarifies how the aging process works for Tectonese.

%%* ''{{Series/Forever}}'' has Henry Morgan, who is about 200 but looks to be in his 30s.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': In one episode, there is a subplot where [[spoiler: one of the suspects was a victim of the real culprit, a wanted sex offender in his twenties posing as a high schooler]].