Casting is a delicate balance for any movie or TV series. It would help if you had an actor who fits the part perfectly in looks and personality, but that’s not always possible. In some cases, it seems like the casting director struggled to find an appropriate talent that fit the desired age and personality. For whatever reason they were cast, some actors were significantly older than the iconic characters they played.
1. Henry Thomas
2. Stellan Skarsgard
You need to understand the timeline of The Exorcist for this one, but Stellan Skarsgard was way too old for his role in The Exorcist: Beginning. Skarsgard plays a younger version of Max von Sydow’s Father Lankester Merrin from The Exorcist. The problem? Skarsgard was 53 while filming Beginning, while Sydow was 43 while filming The Exorcist.
3. Seth Rogan
Rogan was initially meant to play a younger version of himself in the 2007 comedy loosely based on his life in Superbad. However, Jonah Hill was cast to play Seth instead. This was an unusual decision since Hill is only a year younger than Rogan, so playing a teenager graduating high school when the actor is in his 30s seems an odd casting choice.
4. Robert de Niro
The actor played a younger version of himself in The Irishman, and while de-aging someone a couple of decades is fine, getting a man in his 70s to look like he’s in his 20s was a feat the filmmakers were not up for.
5. Alan Rickman
Rickman was too old to play Snape in the Harry Potter series, though most of the adult cast needed to be younger to match the characters they were meant to portray in the books. It seems the casting director wanted to include most of the United Kingdom’s elite acclaimed actors in the production, so age was probably never considered.
6. Fabien Frankel
House of the Dragon made some very odd casting decisions. The story’s timeline jumps significantly throughout season one, so it stands to reason that all the actors need to age in appearance. The actresses who portrayed Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower were swapped for older actresses. In contrast, Paddy Considine was in the makeup artist chair to age up for his role as King Viserys Targaryen.
However, Fabien Frankel, who played Ser Criston Cole, seems to have found the fountain of youth as he didn’t age at all during the 20 years in which the story takes place.
7. Florence Pugh
Little Women is a classic American book, and several film adaptations have been extremely popular. In the 2019 version, Pugh attempted to play a much younger character in their pre-teens, which didn’t sit well with some viewers. A 22-year-old playing an 18-year-old is understandable; a 22-year-old playing a 12-year-old takes much more effort.
8. Josh Brolin
Instead of putting Tommy Lee Jones in makeup, the casting director of Men in Black 3 opted for Josh Brolin as a young Agent K. It still required over an hour in the makeup chair and prosthetics to get Brolin to look the way he did.
9. The Cast of Grease
Finding an ensemble cast of multi-talented singing and dancing actors in the 70s might have been hard to achieve because most of Grease’s cast were in their 20s and 30s and playing high schoolers. Olivia Newton-John, for example, was 29. Casting director Joel Thum says it was a deliberate choice, so the ensemble appeared similar in age to the main stars.
10. Kevin Spacey
Beyond the Sea is the story of singer Bobby Darin’s rise to fame while he was in his 20s. When the movie came out in 2004, Spacey was 45 years old. Many fans felt he couldn’t pull off being a 20-something Darrin, especially when the actress playing his love interest, Kate Bosworth, was 24 years younger.
11. Robert Redford
Redford is an iconic actor who’s been in the business for most of his life. This one may be a bit semantic, considering The Natural is about an aging baseball player, but Roy Hobbs is 35, whereas Redford was nearly 50 years old when he played the role. Even the best hitters can’t stay in the show through their 40s.
12. Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson is a phenomenal actress and has had a fantastic career. Still, her role as Elinor Dashwood in the 1995 adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility was strange, given the actress was a 36-year-old playing a character who is meant to be 19. Even Thompson said in interviews that she felt she was too old for the role.
13. Ben Platt
Dear Evan Hansen is a poignant musical about a high school student with social anxiety disorder who fabricates a story to get his peers to accept him. Many fans felt the then-25-year-old Ben Platt was too old to portray a teenager. However, no one can deny his brilliant singing talent.
