Almost Famous used Michael Angarano as the 9-year-old William Miller for the first 20-odd minutes and Patrick Fugit as his 15-year-old self for the rest of the movie.
An Angel at My Table: The child version of writer Janet Frame is played by Alexia Keogh, teenage Janet is played by Karen Fergusson, and adult Janet is played by Kerry Fox.
In Atonement, Briony is portrayed as a child by Saoirse Ronan and an adult by Romola Garai, who bear a remarkable resemblance to each other. Then Vanessa Redgrave shows up as the elderly version in the final scene.
Hilariously inverted in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, when Dr. Evil returns to his lair and his evil organization in 1999 after thirty years of being cryogenically frozen ... and sees that his wife, Frau Farbissina, looks exactly the same as before.
Played straight in the sequel, where, after traveling back in time, Dr. Evil barely recognizes Number Two (portrayed by Rob Lowe instead of Robert Wagner). Additionally, a flashback in the third film shows young actors portraying Austin, Dr. Evil, and Number Two as teenagers (and toddlers). Interestingly, despite Mike Myers portraying both Austin and Dr. Evil in all films, their teenager versions are portrayed by different actors.
In Batman, Hugo Blick played a younger Jack Napier while Jack Nicholson plays his older self as he becomes the Joker.
Ewan McGregor portrayed young Edward Bloom in Big Fish, while Albert Finney portrayed old Ed. Reportedly, the decision was made when somebody noticed the resemblance between McGregor and young Finney. Perry Waltson portrayed Ed as a child.
The resemblance◊ isremarkable,◊ but is pretty much lost on most movie-goers, as they are not familiar with Albert Finney's early work.
Richard Linklater's movie Boyhood is a major aversion to this trope. The movie takes place over 12 years, using the same cast. The catch is that the movie started production in 2002, and was not released until 2013. This means that the actors actually age with their characters.
The Butterfly Effect was set around three different periods where the main character is around 8-10, then around 14-16 and finally the present 20 odd. Not only did casting need to find child look-alikes for the main character, but all the other main characters; they did a pretty good job, too.
But because Viewers Are Morons, the character somehow kept the same haircut throughout all of his life.
Citizen Kane, being a fictionalized biopic, presented the title character in all ages. All of them are Orson Welles in makeup, except for eight-year-old Kane, played by Buddy Swan.
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, different actors play Benjamin as he grows younger into his "childhood". Daisy was also played by different actresses as a little girl and a teenager.
Man of Steel: While Henry Cavill plays Superman as both a 33-year-old and a yougn adult, Dylan Sprayberry plays Clark as a 13-year-old and Cooper Timberline plays Clark as a 9-year-old.
In Doctor Zhivago, the eponymous character is played by Omar Sharif. At the beginning of the movie, there is a flashback with the young Yuri. The actor who plays the old Yuri really looks a lot like the actor who plays the young Yuri because the two are father and son.
In Eternal Beauty, a British dark comedy, the character of Jane is played by Sally Hawkins, while her younger self, is played by Morfydd Clark. Billie Piper and Natalie O'Neill play old and respectively younger Nicola. Alice Lowe plays older Alice, while Elysia Welch plays younger Alice.
Force of Nature: The Dry 2: In the flashbacks to Aaron Falk (Eric Bana)'s camping trip with his parents to the same mountains where Alice has now disappeared, the teenaged Aaron is played by Archie Thomson.
Forrest Gump has Michael Conner Humphreys and Hanna Hall play young Forrest and Jenny. In fact, the story goes that Tom Hanks didn't know how he'd voice Forrest until he heard Michael.
A strange case in Gangster No. 1. Paul Bettany plays the unnamed gangster in The '70s, and Malcolm McDowell plays him in modern times, but none of the other characters change actors. Also, Bettany is much taller than McDowell.
Averted in Ghosts of Mississippi, which takes place over five years (1989-1994). However, neither the protagonist's children nor those of his second wife age one bit.
The Goddess of 1967, both for the female lead (Bree Beadman is the young version of Rose Byrne) and her mum (Satya Gumbert is the young version of Elise McRedie).
The Godfather starred Marlon Brando as the eponymous Vito Corleone, while The Godfather Part II had Robert De Niro as a younger Vito in flashback sequences. This is particularly notable because both actors received Oscars for the role, the first time the same character has received two awards for different actors. The character also appeared in the same film as a boy, played by yet another actor, Oreste Baldini.
In the same flashback scenes, the characters of Carmela Corleone, Peter Clemenza, and Sal Tessio were all played by younger actors — as were Sonny, Fredo, Michael, and Connie Corleone, who all appeared as babies and young children.
Michael Corleone's two children were also played by different actors from movie to movie. In fact, the boy who played Anthony Corleone in the second film was the older brother of the boy who played him in the first film.
In Halloween (1978), Will Sandin portrayed a young Michael Myers at the beginning of the film, while Nick Castle portrayed "The Shape" (older Michael with his mask on), and Tony Moran played an older Michael for the brief scene without his mask.
Baby Harry Potter was played by the Saunders triplets (first names uncredited) in the first movie and by Toby Papworth in last movie.
In "Snape's Worst Memory" sequence from Order of the Phoenix, young Snape, James, Sirius, Peter, and Lupin are played by Alec Hopkins, Robbie Jarvis, James Walters, Charles Hughes, and James Utechin, respectively.
In Snape's Pensieve Flashback from Deathly Hallows: Part 2, young Snape, Lily, Petunia, James, and Sirius are played by Benedict Clarke, Ellie Darcey-Alden, Ariella Paradise, Alfie McIlwain, and Rohan Gotobed, respctively.
Otherwise, the Harry Potter series represents a notable aversion. When the first movie was made, it was assumed that the child actors would probably need to be recast at some point, but all of the major ones remained for the entirety of the series - nearly a decade in total.
The Fantastic Beasts series has forty-something Dumbledore played by Jude Law, making him the only character in the series to be played by three actors for more than a bit part. His brother Aberforth, who starts appearing in The Secrets of Dumbledore, is played by Richard Coyle.
In A Home at the End of the World, Colin Farrell's character is played by Andrew Chalmers and Erik Smith, and Dallas Roberts's by Jonathan Glover (no, not that one). Sissy Spacek, on the other hand, stays on throughout; eight years isn't that much when you're already over 50.
In Hook, Gwyneth Paltrow portrayed Wendy Darling as a child/young woman, while Maggie Smith portrays Wendy as an old lady; Peter Pan was portrayed by three different actors as a baby, a younger boy and a twelve-year-old, before his adult self was portrayed by Robin Williams.
Hayden Panettiere spends most of If You Believe as Ally Walker's Time-Shifted Actor, as she plays Walker's younger self who comes back to help her out. (She also plays Lauren Bacall's character as a little girl at the start of Too Rich: The Secret Life Of Doris Duke.)
Bobbie Anderson, Jean Gale, Jeanine Anne Roose, Ronnie Ralph, and Georgie Nokes play the child versions of, respectively, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), young Mary Hatch (Donna Reed), Violet Bick (Gloria Grahame), Sam Wainwright (Frank Albertson), and Harry Bailey (Todd Karns) in It's a Wonderful Life.
Life of Pi: Pi is played by four different actors; Suraj Sharma gets most of the screen time as the teenage Pi, followed by Irrfan Khan as the adult Pi who narrates his story to a writer. Ayush Tandon plays Pi at age 11-12 and Gautam Belur plays Pi at age 5.
Truly averted in The Limey (1999), where the young Terence Stamp is shown by reusing footage from his earlier movie, Poor Cow (1967).
While a child actor had to portray the 10 year old version of title character in Little Big Man, Dustin Hoffman wore make-up to portray the character's centenarian self. He made his voice sound old by going into his dressing room and screaming at the top of his lungs for an hour.
When Spider-Man made his debut in the franchise at age 15, he was played by Tom Holland. Later on, Word of God would state that the little boy Tony rescued in Iron Man 2 (played by director Jon Favreau's son Max) was in fact a nine-year-old Peter Parker, making Max Favreau a retroactive example.
Dakota Goyo and Ted Allpress play Thor and Loki as kids in Thor, respectively. Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston play them as adults.
Speaking of Ant-Man, this is Played With in regards to Hank Pym, played as an elderly man by Michael Douglas for most of the film. The opening flashback sees Dax Griffin as the body double for Young Hank while Douglas provides the voice and face capture, with the special effects team de-aging his facial features.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has a similar case with Ego. Kurt Russell plays Ego for the main part of the film, but like Ant-Man, the movie opens with a flashback in which Aaron Schwartz serves as a body double, with Russell providing the voice and facial capture. Downplayed heavily in that Ego is a Time Abyss.
In Black Panther, father and son actors John and Atandwa Kani play older and younger versions of T'Chaka. Seth Carr and Michael B. Jordan played child and adult Erik Killmonger, respectively. Denzel Whitaker and Forest Whitaker play the older and younger versions of Zuri, and unlike the actors playing T'Chaka they are not related despite the shared surname.
Ariana Greenblatt plays young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War, while Zoe Saldaña plays her adult counterpart. In the same film, Ross Marquand plays a much older Red Skull, who has been cursed to guard the Soul Stone for nearly a hundred years, after Hugo Weaving reportedly refused to reprise the role after Captain America: The First Avenger.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: As is the case with the above-listed Ego and Hank Pym, Hayley Lovitt is the body double for the thirty-years-younger Janet van Dyne, whose voice and face capture were done by Janet's primary actress, Michelle Pfeiffer. Straight examples include Madeleine McGraw as seven-year-old Hope van Dyne and RaeLynn Bratten as young Ava Starr. As adults, Hope is played by Evangeline Lilly and Ava is played by Hannah John-Kamen.
Avengers: Endgame: After the five-year Time Skip, Emma Fuhrmann takes over the role of Cassie Lang from Abby Ryder Fortson, who played the character in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp. In the same movie, Jackson Dunn and Lee Moore make appearances as Scott Lang at the ages 12 and 93 respectively. Under normal circumstances, Scott is played by Paul Rudd. The film's ending also sees Patrick Gorman as the body double for the elderly Steve Rogers, with the character's primary actor Chris Evans providing the facial capture and voice.
Black Widow has three examples. Ever Anderson plays a teenage Natasha Romanoff in flashbacks, who's portrayed by Scarlett Johansson as an adult. In the same vein, Yelena Belova, who's portrayed in the present day by Florence Pugh, is played by Violet McGraw as a child in those flashbacks. Lastly, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays a young Antonia Dreykov. Present-day Antonia, a.k.a. Taskmaster, is portrayed by Olga Kurylenko.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has the title character played by Jayden Zhang and Arnold Sun in flashbacks during his youth, with Simu Liu portraying him as an adult. Additionally, Elodie Fong and Harmonie He play Shang-Chi's sister Xialing in those flashbacks. As an adult, Xialing is portrayed by Meng'er Zhang.
The final scene of Masquerade (2021) shows the wounded Casey-Rose crawl from her house with a look of steely determination. This blends into a close up of the adult Rose (now her alias), having carried out her own break-in and revenge years later.
Mission to Mars has a brief one of these in a flashback montage. Interestingly, the boy playing Gary Sinise's character as a child was Sinise's own son, McCanna. "Mac" would go on to do the same the following year in Gary's next sci-fi film, Impostor.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) features Joe Morton as the present-day version of Corey Hawkins's Houston Brooks from Skull Islandin the scene where Brooks is among those who sees the adult Mothra emerge from her cocoon.
In the Soviet sci-fi film Moscow — Cassiopeia, a minor character is first shown as a teenager and then (due to the main characters experiencing Time Dilation) as an adult. They are, obviously, played by different actresses. This serves more to give closure to a minor subplot involving a love letter that she anonymously sent to the boy who would become The Captain that she wrote with her off hand in order to hide her handwriting. She admits it was her as an adult.
Once Upon a Time in America spanned a few decades and thus had many characters portrayed both as adolescents and adults. Among these were David "Noodles" Aaronson played by Scott Tiler and Robert De Niro chronologically, Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz played by Rusty Jacobs and James Woods chronologically, and Deborah Gelly played by a young Jennifer Connelly and adult Elizabeth McGovern.
In Ophelia, three characters are played by younger actors at the beginning of the film, due to the characters being significantly younger; fifteen-year-old Hamlet is played by Jack Cunningham-Nuttall, young Ophelia is played by Mia Quiney and young Laertes is played by Calum O'Rourke; as adults they're portrayed by George MacKay, Daisy Ridley and Tom Felton, respectively. In a flashback, nineteen-year-old Mechtild is played by Anna Rust, with Naomi Watts portraying her in the present-day.
In Psych-Out, Jenny and Steve are played as adults by Susan Strasberg and Bruce Dern, and in a flashback by child actors Susan Bushman and William Gerrity.
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman's daughter Nell plays young Rachel in the flashback sequences of Rachel, Rachel, which was directed by Newman and starred Woodward as Rachel.
The Sandlot has Smalls played by Tom Guiry as a young boy and by Arliss Howard as an adult, with film director David Mickey Evans narrating as the adult Smalls. Mike Vitar plays Benny Rodriguez for most of the film, with his elder brother Pablo as the adult Benny in the epilogue. Danny Nucci appears as Benny in The Sandlot 3: Heading Home, with that film's setting being between the first film and its epilogue.
In A Score to Settle, Young Frankie is played in flashbacks by Nicolas Cage's nephew Bailey Coppola. Nicolas Cage plays the older Frank.
The movie Serenity has a flashback of a preteen River in an outdoor classroom setting arguing against the officially-taught premise of the Alliance war on the Independents. She is played by Hunter Ansley Wryn, while the older character in the film's present is played by Summer Glau. Glau still provides the voiceover for those scenes to make the character connection easier.
The Shawshank Redemption features a shot of Red's prison file, complete with mug shots that look like a much younger Morgan Freeman. The actor in the mugshots? His son, Alfonso Freeman, 22 years younger.
Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, filmed in 1991, and in its prequel Red Dragon, which, despite being filmed in 2002, was set in 1980, and managed to pull it off. However, in the second prequel, Hannibal Rising, which takes place decades earlier and necessitated a much younger actor, Hannibal is played by Gaspard Ulliel.
Jim Carrey played "Adult Joe Wenteworth" in the framing sequences of Simon Birch (the younger version of the character being played by Joseph Mazzello).
Spiral (2021): For the main part of the film, William Schenk is portrayed by Max Minghella, while Maximus and Leonidas Castrounis play him in the flashback where he's seen as a child.
An interesting aversion was done in Stardust, where Michelle Pfeiffer's character goes from old to young and then ages rapidly throughout the film. Instead of using two different actors for the different ages, they used make-up to more accurately portray her aging.
Played straight with the character of Dunstan, who's first played by Ben Barnes (credited as "Young Dunstan") and then by Nathaniel Parker.
Jonathan Simpson takes over the role of Sarek from Mark Lenard for the flashback sequences to Spock's birth (and an uncredited infant plays Spock himself).
Star Wars: While relatively uncommon for the series, because most actors directly reprise their roles regardless of the chronology, there are some cases where different actors are cast to account for characters' ages.
The prequels cast Ewan McGregor as the young version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a role originated by the late Alec Guinness.
Anakin/Darth Vader has the record for most actors: There's child Anakin (Jake Lloyd), young adult Anakin (Hayden Christensen), suit Vader (David Prowse in the original trilogy; Hayden Christensen in Revenge of the Sith and Obi-Wan Kenobi; Spencer Wilding in Rogue One), voice Vader (James Earl Jones), fencing stunt double (Bob Anderson), and unmasked Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi (Sebastian Shaw, who also played Anakin's Force ghost until he was replaced in the latter by Christensen from the 2004 DVD release onward).
McGregor and Christensen both reprise their prequel roles in Obi-Wan Kenobi, an interquel that takes place between the prequel and original trilogies, because enough time had passed in real life that they could play the characters closer to how they appeared in the originals.
The young Skywalker twins in Revenge of the Sith were both played by Aidan Barton, the son of one of the film's editors, Roger Barton. The adult Skywalkers are played by Mark Hamill (Luke) and Carrie Fisher (Leia). In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Grant Feely and Vivien Lyra Blair respectively play Luke and Leia at ten years old.
Owen and Beru Lars were portrayed by Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse in the prequels. They were portrayed by Phil Brown and Shelagh Fraser in A New Hope.
Daniel Logan portrayed young Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fett was portrayed by Jeremy Bulloch in the Original Trilogy. Temuera Morrison (who portrayed Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones and dubbed Boba's lines in the 2004 edition of The Empire Strikes Back) portrays Boba in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett (though Boba's only slightly older than he was in the Original Trilogy, he has aged terribly as a result of his injuries in the Sarlaac pit and the harsh environment of Tatooine).
An unusual aversion of the trope: Ian McDiarmid plays Palpatine in both the original trilogy and in the prequels. He was in his late thirties when he first appeared in Return of the Jedi but wore makeup to look older; then, by the time The Phantom Menace was being made, he had become the right age to play "young" Palpatine. (He also wears the makeup at the end of the prequels as well: the reason for the change in his appearance is not the lapse of time but rather a Force-related injury sustained during a duel.)
The Force Awakens: Rey is played at 19 by Daisy Ridley, and as a child by Cailey Fleming during the flashback sequence. Josefine Irrera Jackson plays child Rey in The Rise of Skywalker's flashbacks, presumably because by this point Fleming had noticeably aged out of the role.
Rogue One: while Felicity Jones played the adult Jyn Erso, her child counterparts were played by sister duo Beau and Dolly Gladsdon. Meanwhile, the portrayal of Grand Moff Tarkin used Guy Henry to capture the likeness of Peter Cushing (Wayne Pygram having previously briefly played him in Revenge of the Sith), with the same being done for Princess Leia using Ingvild Deila.
In Superman: The Movie, the teenage Clark Kent is played by Jeff East while the adult counterpart is played by Christopher Reeve (although Reeve dubbed all of East's lines).
In the Tenacious D movie, The Pick of Destiny, amazingly similar-looking child actors are used for young Jack Black and Kyle Gass.
The kid who played Jack Black also played a young version of Black's character in Nacho Libre.
In the movie of The Time Travellers Wife, the daughter Alba is played at five years old and eight years old by two sisters. This also allowed them to be on screen together.
Titanic (1997) had Kate Winslet as Rose in the main storyline, and Gloria Stuart as "Old Rose" in the frame story.
Interestingly, this is one of only two examples where two separate actors were nominated for Academy Awards for playing the same character in the same film. The other time was Iris, where Iris Murdoch was played by Judi Dench and...Kate Winslet.
In The Movie of To Kill a Mockingbird, the voice of Scout as an adult narrator was done by Kim Stanley, while Scout as a child was played by Mary Badham.
Notably averted in TRON: Legacy, where relatively new techniques are used to make Jeff Bridges appear much younger than he actually is during the flashback sequences. Also helps him to portray Clu.
Mr. Agee is played by Murray Matheson as an elderly man and by Evan Richards as a child.
Mrs. Dempsey is played by Helen Shaw as an elderly woman and by Laura Mooney as a child.
Mr. Weinstein is played by Martin Garner as an elderly man and by Scott Nemes as a child.
Mrs. Weinstein is played by Selma Diamond as an elderly woman and by Tanya Fenmore as a child.
Mr. Mute is played by Peter Brocco as an elderly man and by Christopher Eisenmann as a child.
Played with in Walk Hard. While a young Dewey Cox is portrayed by a child actor, John C. Reilly plays him all the way from age 14 into Dewey's 70's, and Dewey's first wife is played by the same actress (in her thirties) from age 12 to her elder years. This is played for comedy.
Watchmen tried to avert this to the best of their ability by casting young and then aging up. This meant that Carla Gugino and Jeffrey Dean Morgan spent most of their screentime under heavy makeup.
In Water for Elephants, the younger version of Jacob is played by Robert Pattinson, and the older version who appears in the present to set up a framing device for the story ala Titanic is played by Hal Holbrook.
Wendy: For all the characters that appear as both kids and adults, most prominently James and Wendy at the end of the movie.
◊ is remarkable,
