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Good child actors are hard to come by, and when you find the ideal performer, in just a few years they’ll stop being a child. For roles about teenagers, however, finding ideal candidates is far easier, since a lot of adults can play them convincingly.
So convincingly, in fact, that audiences might not realize the actors were adults at all. Of course, there are films where the entire high school is populated by adults, but in well made productions, we can suspend our disbelief. These are the actors that, when their movies happened, seemed eternally young.
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Stockard Channing in Grease
Channing was 33 while playing high-school student Rizzo, making her significantly older than nearly everyone else portraying teenagers in the movie.
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Alan Ruck in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Ruck was 29 when playing anxious teenager Cameron Frye, something audiences often forget because he convincingly fit alongside the younger cast.
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Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls
McAdams was 25 during filming, older than many viewers assume for someone so strongly associated with one of cinema’s definitive high-school movies.
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Jason Earles in Hannah Montana
Earles was already around 30 years old while playing Miley Stewart’s teenage brother Jackson on the Disney Channel sitcom.
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Keiko Agena in Gilmore Girls
Agena was 27 when Gilmore Girls began, despite convincingly portraying teenage student Lane Kim throughout much of the series.
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Bianca Lawson in Pretty Little Liars
Lawson became famous for repeatedly playing teenagers well into adulthood, including during Pretty Little Liars when she was already in her early thirties.
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Gabrielle Carteris in Beverly Hills, 90210
Carteris was 29 when she started playing high-school student Andrea Zuckerman, making her one of television’s most famous older “teenagers.”
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Shirley Henderson in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Henderson was 37 while playing ghostly Hogwarts student Moaning Myrtle, surprising many fans who assumed the actor was far younger.
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Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man
Garfield was 28 during filming, older than many audiences realize for an actor portraying awkward teenage Peter Parker.
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Stacey Dash in Clueless
Dash was 28 while playing high-school student Dionne Davenport, making her nearly a decade older than several younger cast members.
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Thomas Brodie-Sangster in The Queen’s Gambit
Brodie-Sangster was 30 during production, yet still looked youthful enough that many viewers assumed he was much younger.
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Ben McKenzie in The O.C.
McKenzie was 25 when The O.C. premiered, despite playing troubled teenager Ryan Atwood throughout the massively popular teen drama.
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Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club
Nelson was 25 during filming and noticeably older than several co-stars, though audiences still accepted him as rebellious high-school student John Bender.
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Charisma Carpenter in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Carpenter was already 27 when Buffy premiered, making her considerably older than the high-school cheerleader character she played on the series.
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Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer
Rudd was already 32 while playing a teenage camp counselor, yet his youthful appearance made many viewers assume he was far closer to the character’s actual age.
The post 15 Actors That Were Older Than You Thought They Were appeared first on Den of Geek.
