Examples of Underage Casting in film.
- In Annihilation (2018), main character Lena is introduced as a PhD of Biology teaching a class about cancer. It would likely take at least ten years to complete the Undergraduate and Graduate program to earn her Doctorate. Considering Natalie Portman was in her mid-30s at the time of filming, this wouldn't normally be a problem. However, her backstory ALSO includes another six years of being a grunt in the military prior to starting college. If everything went ideally for her where she started college immediately after being discharged and then spent the next ten years in school and graduated on time, she should just be getting into her professional career as a freshly minted Biologist PhD. However, all of the story beats imply that she's been a professional in this field for a little while.
- Angela Lansbury was only three years older than the actor playing her son in the 1962 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate.
- Sally Field played Tom Hanks' mother in Forrest Gump, though she's only ten years older than him. Granted, the two didn't share the screen together much since many of her scenes are flashbacks to when he was younger. Once it came time for them to act off one another, Field was in old-lady makeup while Hanks was invoking Dawson Casting by playing a man in his 20s.
- In Superman Returns, Lois Lane is played by Kate Bosworth, who was only 22 years old and looked it. She was supposed to be an experienced reporter with a Pulitzer or two under her belt, not to mention a kindergarten-age son. Brandon Routh (Clark Kent) was in his mid-20s during production. The most problematic part of all this is that the movie is supposed to take place five years after the events of Superman II, which makes these characters 35 at the very minimum.
- The Batman movies love casting young women as professionals that should be at least ten years older:
- Nicole Kidman was 27 when she played Dr Chase Meridian in Batman Forever and looked younger at times. She's far too young to be a renowned criminal psychologist who consults with the police; realistically she probably wouldn't have finished her PhD yet, plus it takes around a decade or more to become a qualified clinical psychologist, so it's highly unlikely she'd have her own practice or be experienced enough to be considered an expert in her field. Originally, Rene Russo was cast as Chase; at 40, her age was far more fitting for the character, but Russo got booted for being "too old" next to Val Kilmer (he's only five years younger).
- In Batman & Robin, Dr. Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy has a PhD and a career as a botanist, meaning she would be in her late 20s at the youngest but is most likely in her 30s, and her comments toward Robin suggest that she sees him as the proverbial Younger Man. Uma Thurman was only 26 during filming; she was still older than Chris O'Donnell (Robin)...by about two months.
- Katie Holmes played an assistant district attorney in Batman Begins despite being 25 years old during filming. If Rachel Dawes had gone to law school straight out of college, she'd have graduated at 24 or 25. It's unlikely given her youth and inexperience that she'd be handling cases—especially major, high-profile ones—on her own. Maggie Gyllenhaal, who replaced her for The Dark Knight, is only a year older, though she is at least Younger than She Looks.
- In Oldboy (2003), the actor who plays Lee Woo-jin, Yoo Ji-tae, was born in 1976, while a scene in which his character is a teenager takes place in 1979. However, this can be interpreted as Woo-jin being so obsessed with revenge that he doesn't move on, stuck in his youth, and looks younger than he should be.
- In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
- Sean Connery plays Dr. Henry Jones, Sr., father of Henry Jones, Jr., or Indiana Jones, who is played by Harrison Ford. However, Connery is only 12 years older than Ford (Connery was born in 1930, Ford in 1942), even if his baldness and white beard makes him look significantly older.
- Alison Doody was 21 when she was cast as Dr. Elsa Schneider, and although her age wasn't stated onscreen, she would have to be at least 30 to have her credentials as an experienced archaeologist.
- The Bourne Series:
- Julia Stiles played Nicky Parsons, one of Jason Bourne's field handlers on an extremely sensitive mission and apparently has beyond Top Secret clearance given what she is involved in (monitoring all of the Treadstone field agents). In other words, significantly more dangerous to the Agency than Bourne is if she screws up, or if something was missed in her vetting and she is less than 100% loyal. When The Bourne Identity was released, Stiles was a very young looking 21. There's an attempted Hand Wave in The Bourne Supremacy when Nicky explains her cover was an exchange student studying in Paris.
- The latest film in the series Jason Bourne has this problem as well, with Alicia Vikander, in her 20s, playing a high-ranking CIA official, who concludes the film angling for an even higher position.
- Any incarnation of Harley Quinn really counts, since she's always presented as a very young (or at least, childlike in manner and appearance) character, despite the fact that she held an M.D., specialised in psychiatry, and was experienced enough to be allowed to spend time alone with highly dangerous patients - meaning that she would presumably be in her mid-thirties at the youngest by the time she became The Joker's moll, and she was by his side for at least a few years. The version of her in Suicide Squad (2016) has to take the cake, though, as she is played by the Margot Robbie, in her mid-20s, who in real life would be just about finishing med school and choosing her specialty at that age, and wouldn't be let loose unsupervised on a prisoner of the Joker's calibre for years to come. And unlike some other professions on this list, psychiatry is one that is very difficult for "teen genius" types to get into early, since it requires not just raw intelligence but rigorous demonstrations of mental and emotional maturity. One depiction tried to explain away her getting to where she is with the excuse that she slept with her professor for good grades. Sextra Credit may explain one professor, but not the entire psychiatry program.
- Suicide Squad also has examples in the couple Rick Flag and June Moone (aka the Enchantress). Flag is a colonel, a rank probably expected for someone older than 35-year-old Joel Kinnaman; June is referred to as "Doctor", meaning she has spent at least a decade studying to get a Ph.D in archaeology, and yet her actress, Cara Delevingne, was only in her early 20s
- Birds of Prey (2020) attempts to square the circle with Harley by establishing that she is, in fact, a decent amount older than Robbie's actual age.
- In Days of Thunder, then-22-year-old Nicole Kidman played a full-fledged neurosurgeon. At that age, she would be at most only halfway through medical school. Even coming from a country that doesn't require a college degree before entering medical school, she would still only be fresh out of school.
- The Insider: 33-year-old Russell Crowe plays Dr. Jeffrey Wigand. The real Wigand was 50 when the events of the movie happened and is three years older than Lowell Bergman, whereas Crowe is 24 years younger than Al Pacino (who plays Bergman in the movie).
- James Bond:
- The World Is Not Enough was much mocked for having its main Bond Girl, Dr. Christmas Jones, played by then 28-year-old Denise Richards and looking even younger, be supposedly a world-renowned nuclear physicist. What makes it stand out even more is that Dr. Arkov was clearly in his fifties.
- In No Time to Die, Lyutsifer Safin reveals that he was the assassin sent to kill Madeline Swan and her mother when she was a child, meaning he was an adult and a trained killer 20+ years ago, so he should be at least in his mid-40s in the present day. Safin's actor Rami Malek was 38 during filming, only four years older than Dr. Swan's actress Léa Seydoux, and thanks to his naturally boyish features, he doesn't even look that old.
- In Willow, in a rare reversal of the common practice of adults being cast as teenagers, then 17-year-old Warwick Davis played a married man with small children.
- Ultimately inverted by All the Money in the World, where the 80-year-old J. Paul Getty was originally portrayed by 58-year-old Kevin Spacey with the aid of aging makeup... until Spacey's sexual scandals erased him from the movie and he was replaced with Christopher Plummer, who at age 88 was five years older than Getty was when he died!
- In Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones had just turned 50 when he first played Agent Kay, who'd served in the MIB since the early 1960s, which should've put him at least in his early 60s. Word of God had considered casting Clint Eastwood, who would've fit the right age, before casting Jones.
- Space Cowboys begins with a prologue where Jones' character is a pilot and budding astronaut in his twenties in 1958, meaning he's pushing 70 in the present-day setting of the film. Jones was not yet a teenager in 1958; as other movies like Men In Black, the film uses Jones being Younger Than He Looks to fit him in at an older age bracket, since at age 54, Jones would still be in a reasonable enough age to be an astronaut.
- The Karate Kid Part III: While Terry Silver is a Vietnam War veteran who is close in age to John Kreese, Thomas Ian Griffith was 25 at the time of filming, making him 16 years younger than Martin Kove, and four months younger than Ralph Macchio, who is playing an 18-year-old Daniel LaRusso. This would continue when Griffith reprised his role as Silver for the fourth season of Cobra Kai, though there his silver hair combined with Macchio's still relatively youthful looking face means Silver does look closer in age to Kreese (75-year-old Kove) than to Daniel (59-year-old Macchio). To cap things off, Nick Marini, who plays young Terry Silver in flashbacks in Cobra Kai, was older at the time of filming his scenes in season 3 than Griffith was during the filming of The Karate Kid Part III.
- In Ladies of the Chorus, Adele Jergens (then-31) was eight years and a half older than Marilyn Monroe (then-22), and played the mother of Marilyn's character.
- Shaft (2019): Despite being a sequel to Shaft (2000), Richard Roundtree's Shaft is retconned into being Samuel L. Jackson's Shaft's father, instead of his uncle like in the 2000 film. Jackson is only 7 years younger than Roundtree.
- A mermaid character was cut completely from Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. She was played by a 15-year-old actress who would have had Godiva Hair. She was also supposed
to be a Love Interest for Adam. Given the Dawson Casting for the Rangers themselves, it resulted in Jailbait Taboo if you consider cast age rather than characters. - The Room (2003): Johnny's fiance Lisa is implied to be at least in her late twenties, since they've been together for seven years, but Juliette Danielle was twenty-two at the time of filming next to Tommy Wiseau in his late forties. This is apparently a result of the original actress for Lisa dropping out, and Juliette Danielle (who'd been cast as Michelle) getting bumped up.
- Keira Knightley in Love Actually plays a woman getting married, and her husband and other love interest were in their late twenties and early thirties respectively. She was eighteen, and had in fact been playing her real age in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Bend It Like Beckham and The Hole just before.
- Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook plays a woman who has been married for several years and is the love interest of thirty-seven-year-old Bradley Cooper. She was twenty-one. The role was originally meant for Anne Hathaway, who was the slightly more believable age of twenty-eight.
- In Harakiri, Tatsuya Nakadai plays a man who has an adult daughter and an infant grandson, at only 30.
- Blake Lively was 23 when she was cast as Carol Ferris in Green Lantern (2011), yet several lines imply she's the same age as Hal Jordan (played by 35-year-old Ryan Reynolds) and Hector Hammond (39-year-old Peter Sarsgaard), the latter of whom was a professor.
- In Saving Private Ryan, Harrison Young plays a character in his 70s who had served in D-Day. Young was 14 when the actual invasion occurred
- In House of Gucci, 35-year-old Lady Gaga and 37-year-old Adam Driver played a 47-year-old Patrizia Reggiani and 46-year-old Maurizio Gucci, respectively.
- The Truman Show: Christof is the producer of the eponymous show, watching over Truman since he was born 30 years earlier. However, he's played by Ed Harris, who was only in his late 40s at the time. This is because Dennis Hopper, who was in his 60s at the time, had originally been cast as Christof before being replaced by Harris during production.
- This became a bit of a problem in the X-Men Film Series. For some inexplicable reason, each of the post-reboot films involved a ten-year Time Skip from the previous one. It wasn't so bad going from X-Men: First Class to Days of Future Past; ten years passed and the returning characters were roughly the same age as their actors. But in X-Men: Apocalypse, another ten years pass. Xavier, Magneto, and Moira MacTaggart were pushing 50 while their actors were in their 30s during filming. Havok and Beast would be at least 40 while their actors were in their mid-20s, and Havok and Cyclops' mother doesn't look nearly old enough for her eldest son to be middle-aged.note In fact, some have pointed out that Dark Phoenix, which takes place in the 90s, should have featured the older actors from the original trilogy, since the first film in the series, X-Men, came out in 2000.
- In Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Tim's father Harry is played by Ryan Reynolds, who is only 19 years older than Justice Smith. While obviously not impossible, Harry would have been quite a young dad.
- In Boyz n the Hood, Laurence Fishburne plays the father of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character, even though the actors are only 7 years apart. This was mocked in the parody film Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, where it's a Running Joke that Tray's father is somehow younger than his teenage son.
- Apt Pupil: Ian McKellen was surprised to be asked to play 75-year-old Kurt Dussander, since he was only 57 at the time of filming.
- The Last Duel: Jacques le Gris and Jean de Carrouges were both reportedly in their mid-to-late fifties in 1386, when the trial and duel took place, while Adam Driver was 36/37 years old and Matt Damon was 49/50 years old during filming. It particularly sticks out due to Marguerite's line about how her fate will not be decided by God but "by which old man tires first"; while Damon's make-up and hair helped make him look much older, Driver looked his actual age.
- Wayne's World 2: Del Preston is a retired roadie that worked with many classic rock groups, including The Doors and The Rolling Stones, in the 1970s. In real life, Ralph Brown, who plays Preston, was only 36 at the time and was still a teenager when Doors frontman Jim Morrison died in 1971.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe has Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh. She's introduced in Black Widow as having been 6 years old in 1995, putting her around 27-28 in the film proper, set in 2016. Pugh herself was born in 1996, and was 23 during production. The Stinger, set shortly after the events of Avengers: Endgame and leading into the events of Hawkeye (which reveals her to have been snapped for five years by Thanos during the events of Avengers: Infinity War), puts Yelena at 29-30, widening the age gap between her and Pugh.
- The Irish Short Film Dandelion has the mother character played by the 23-year-old Rebecca Rose Flynn (who is significantly Older Than They Look). She's the mother of a four-year-old, and her husband is played by an actor ten years her senior. While being a young mother is certainly possible, the script indicates that the character is meant to be older, and the daughter isn't the result of a Teen Pregnancy.
- Eiffel has Romain Duris, then-46, as the 55- to 57-year-old Gustave Eiffel. Also, Real Life Adrienne Bourgès was around 18 in 1858 when she met Eiffel, which would make her 47-49 in 1887-1889. She was played by 24-year-old Emma Mackey in the latter years in the film.
- Battle of Britain: Defied. 36-year-old Michael Caine thought he was too young to play a squadron commander, feeling that a squadron commander should have a certain paternal gravitas. He was rather bluntly told by several veterans that he was about a decade older than most of the squadron commanders in the actual battle.
- In H.M. Pulham, Esq., Hedy Lamarr plays Robert Young's girlfriend from his first job out of college more than twenty years previously, who he then attempts to rekindle the affair with in the present. Robert Young was only 34 when he played the role, but Hedy Lamarr was 27. Basically, their attempt to make her look twenty years older than her younger self consisted of putting her hair up and adding a faint grey streak to it.
- Basic Instinct: According to the screenplay, Gus is 64 and talks about a murder case he remembered from 1955, which is about 35 years before the setting of the film. Gus is played by actor George Dzunda, who was only 46 during filming. This makes him and his partner Nick (Michael Douglas, 47) essentially the same age, instead of having an Old Cop, Young Cop dynamic.
- Beverly Hills Cop: Eddie Murphy was 22 years old playing the seasoned Detroit detective Axl Foley.
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again features Cher as Meryl Streep's mother, despite the fact that she's only three years older than Streep in real life. Justified, as Streep's character is dead and doesn't spend any time onscreen with Cher except for the musical finale.
- Eyes of a Stranger: In their childhood Jane's actress is only a couple of years older than Tracy's (to prevent Jane from appearing too unsympathetic when her neglect allows her little sister to be kidnapped and sexually assaulted). But when the film shows the main action Tracy's actress is more than a decade younger than Jane's actress, a vulnerable teen to her sister's experienced career woman. This makes Tracy a more viable Damsel in Distress (for when her sister's reckless actions cause her to be sexually assaulted again!) And saves her from being too unsympathetic as The Load (since the first assault disabled Tracy Jane has had to take care of her).
- Dan in Real Life: Dan and Ruthie are around the same age, given that they went to high school together. Emily Blunt is twenty-one years younger than Steve Carell.
- The Graduate: Anne Bancroft plays Katherine Ross's mother. They are only 8 years apart in age.
- Song of the South: James Baskett was in his 40s when playing the much older Uncle Remus. Since Baskett's hair went grey early, he looks the same age as his character.
- Back to the Future: Lea Thompson, who plays Lorraine Baines-McFly, is just nine days older than Michael J. Fox, who plays her onscreen son Marty. Although the first film mainly takes place in 1955, at the time when she's the same age as Marty, while the scenes set in 1985 have her wearing prosthetic makeup to look middle aged, making this a justified trope. In the DVD Commentary, they noted how unusual it was to have the same actor play their older and younger selves instead of using a Time-Shifted Actor.
- Saltburn: Rosamund Pike was 43 when she played the mother of then-25-year-old Alison Oliver and Jacob Elordi. This would have made her just eighteen when she gave birth, though this is justified in-universe as both Venetia and Felix are in their teens. She also plays Elspeth after the at least thirteen-year Time Skip to 2020, where (assuming Elspeth is also 43 like Pike in the main section of the story), she would be at least 56.
- Jacob Elordi was 25 during the filming of Priscilla, the same age as Elvis at the start of the movie, but still plays Elvis when the character gets much older, even well into his 30s (Elvis and Priscilla separated when Elvis was 38). Elvis was also a decade older than Priscilla, while Elordi is only a year older than Cailee Spaeny (though she passed for much younger).
- Aloft: Nana and Ivan are a mother and son played by Jennifer Connelly and Cillian Murphy, respectively, despite them only having a six-year age gap between them. This largely works since Nana mostly appears in flashback scenes to when Ivan is a child. However, she finally shows up at the end in the present day scenes, still played by Connelly in old-age makeup that isn't quite convincing enough to make her look like someone who's the mother of a thirty-one-year-old (which is an example of the opposite trope, as Murphy was thirty-eight at the time).
- May December: Joe is stated several times to be thirty-six, with the scandal between him and Gracie starting in 1992 when he was thirteen. Charles Melton was thirty-one during filming and would've only been a year old in 1992.
- In God's Gun, Sybil Danning played the mother of Johnny (Leif Garrett) although she was only nine years older than him.
- Carry On... Series:
- Carry On at Your Convenience: Kenneth Williams played Richard O'Callaghan's father despite only being fourteen years older than him.
- Carry On Abroad: Amelia Bayntun plays the mother of Charles Hawtrey, who was five older younger than her.
- Carry On Behind: Although Joan Sims plays Patsy Rowlands' mother in this film, Sims was only eight months older than Rowlands.
- In The Blue Lagoon (1980), Brooke Shields was 14 when playing adolescent-to-adult Emmeline.
