10 Oldest-Looking Teenagers in Movies

It seems inevitable, when watching movies about teenagers, that you’re going to get examples of actors looking much older than the characters they’re supposed to be playing. It happens a little more often on TV, particularly when more years pass in real life than pass in the show (looking at you, Stranger Things), but certain films have somewhat notoriously featured actors who are clearly adults playing teenagers.

Now, to preface all this, it has to be stressed that sometimes, hiring a teenager to play a teenager is either inappropriate or too taxing for someone who’s still young, which makes hiring an older actor more sensible. Additionally, some high schoolers sometimes look like they’re in their 20s; people grow and mature at different rates, after all. Nevertheless, the following movies are noticeable for casting older actors in the roles of teenagers, with all the following examples involving at least one character who’s supposed to be a teenager, but was ultimately played by someone who didn’t look like one.

10 ‘American Graffiti’ (1973)

Richard Dreyfuss as Curt Henderson

To start off with a milder example, American Graffiti (directed by a pre-Star WarsGeorge Lucas) featured a good many actors over the age of 20 playing teenagers on the last night of their summer vacation. Ron Howard did at least turn 19 the year the film came out, making him relatively close to his character’s age, but Richard Dreyfuss wasn’t quite as convincing, turning 26 in 1973.

Again, it’s not the worst example, but Dreyfuss did slip more naturally into the role of a father with three kids just four years later, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, playing a character at least as old as he was at the time (29/30). Elsewhere, there are a few other actors in American Graffiti who look a little over 20 rather than a little under 20, but not to so great an extent that it ruins the movie or anything.

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9 ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (1986)

Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has four main characters who are in high school, with only one of them – Sloane, played by Mia Sara – being under 20 at the time of the film’s release. In the titular role, Matthew Broderick turned 24 the year the film came out, Jennifer Grey (who plays his younger sister) was two years older than Broderick, and then Alan Ruck was the oldest, turning 30 the year Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released.

His character, Cameron Frye, certainly looks the oldest, but Cameron is also particularly awkward and has trouble fitting in, so having him look a little older works to make him stand out more… maybe. That’s if you’re being charitable, but Ruck is also so good in the role that he generally makes it work, unless you really stop to think about it and/or get a little nitpicky.

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8 ‘Spider-Man’ (2002)

Much of the cast

It took until Tom Holland’s casting in Captain America: Civil War for there to be a live-action Peter Parker who looked genuinely like a teenager. Before then, Tobey Maguire first played the role in 2002’s iconic and genre-defining Spider-Man while in his mid-20s, and Andrew Garfield played the role at the age of 27 in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

It’s worth highlighting Spider-Man over The Amazing Spider-Man, though, when it comes to slightly questionable teenage casting, because Spider-Man has a good many scenes set in and around high school early on where almost no one looks like a high schooler. It’s not just Maguire by any means, with Joe Manganiello (as Flash Thompson) probably looking the oldest, despite Tobey Maguire actually being born the year before him.

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7 ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ (1980)

Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn (at various ages)

When you’re making a biopic, or any kind of epic film, and you want it to span multiple years, you have a couple of options. You can keep one actor in the central role (or supporting roles) and try to make them look younger when needed and older when needed, or you can cast different actors to play the same character at different ages. Sometimes, movies do a bit of both (see Once Upon a Time in America).

So, with Coal Miner’s Daughter, the casting isn’t really questionable throughout, first off because Sissy Spacek’s performance as Loretta Lynn is great, and also because most of the film depicts Lynn’s adult life. Spacek was able to decently play a 16-year-old (in Carrie) a few years before Coal Miner’s Daughter, but four years on, she was required to briefly play Lynn at just 14 years old in the film’s earlier stages, and it didn’t entirely work.

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6 ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (1936)

Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer as the title characters

There are plenty of Romeo and Juliet movies out there, with some even doing an alright job at keeping the casting accurate, as seen in the 1996 version, for example. After all, the title characters are both supposed to be teenagers, with Romeo generally being in his late teens and Juliet being at least a couple of years his junior.

Casting younger actors wasn’t attempted in the 1936 film adaptation, it seems, with the lead actors being much older than the characters usually are. As Romeo, Leslie Howard was in his 40s, and as Juliet, Norma Shearer was about 34 at the time. But the casting of Mercutio, who’s Romeo’s closest friend, was even more extreme, as he was played by John Barrymore, an actor who turned 54 the year Romeo and Juliet came out.

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5 ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (2006)

Lucas Black as Sean Boswell

The whole Fast and Furious franchise was in an odd place pre-2011 (when it really found its footing with Fast Five), with the first three movies not feeling particularly connected outside of some recurring characters. Things changed most dramatically in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which largely took place in the titular city and tried to re-energize the series by following younger characters than the other two movies had.

The protagonist of the film is supposed to be a high schooler, but Lucas Black looks more like he’s nearing the end of college, or even a young adult who should be entering the workforce. The early scenes have some other characters who are supposed to be high schoolers and don’t really look it, with Black only standing out because he’s in the movie much more and because Tokyo Drift continually (and awkwardly) reminds viewers that his character’s a teenager.

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4 ‘The Blob’ (1958)

Steve McQueen as Steve Andrews

Steve McQueen had a pretty consistent appearance throughout the 1960s and even into the 1970s, but going by The Blob, he did seem to take on the look of someone in their 30s fairly early on (and then rarely looked much older). Even if he’d played someone in their early 20s in The Blob, he might’ve looked a little too old at the time, but being a high school student was a bridge too far.

The casting doesn’t prevent The Blob from being a fun 1950s B-movie, and could arguably add some unintentional humor/entertainment to the whole thing, but it definitely stands out. There’s a reason he didn’t play characters this young very often; he just wasn’t convincing as a teenager, and generally excelled in most of the other performances he gave later in his acting career.

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3 ‘The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser’ (1974)

Bruno S. as Kaspar Hauser

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is one of Werner Herzog’s best films, and might also be one of his strangest, too (which is certainly saying something). It was inspired by the story of a real-life man named Kaspar Hauser, who was imprisoned until he was 17 years old and kept locked up inside a single confined location without access to the outside world, and without interacting with any other person beyond his captor.

Hauser only lived until he was 21, and so was played from the age of 17 to 21 by an actor who went by the name Bruno S., and who turned 42 the year The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. The film’s odd tone and sometimes uncanny take on a true story kind of sell it, though, and those who are familiar with Herzog’s work would be well aware that the filmmaker sometimes makes out-there creative decisions that usually pay off. Here, even though their ages vary wildly, Bruno S. is compelling in the titular role, with his performance and Herzog’s direction making it work.

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2 ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ (2021)

Ben Platt as Evan Hansen

Those looking for a great movie musical will not find it with Dear Evan Hansen, which clumsily tries to adapt the Broadway musical of the same name for the big screen. There are plenty of problems found throughout, both unique to the adaptation and perhaps found in the original text, but the most jarring aspect of the film is likely the casting of Ben Platt in the titular role.

Platt was in his early 20s when he played Hansen on stage, and in his late 20s by the time he played the character in film. He does look older than a teenager to begin with, but some of the attempts the filmmakers seemed to use to “de-age” him really didn’t work. Further, most of the other actors playing high schoolers in the film either looked younger or were considerably younger, which just makes the casting of the lead character stand out all the more.

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1 ‘Grease’ (1978)

Almost everyone

Perhaps the gold standard for how not to cast a movie filled with teenagers, Grease is filled with characters who are supposed to be in their late teens, but were played by actors in their 20s or even 30s. Stockard Channing was one of the oldest, being 34 when the movie came out, and old enough to have been in high school back when the film itself was actually set (1958).

The members of the T-Birds probably look older than Channing, though, and when it comes to the leads, John Travolta was in his mid-20s and Olivia Newton-John was almost 30. The casting is far from the only ridiculous part of Grease, but it is easier to criticize and laugh at, to the point where the casting director, Joel Thurm, has even responded – decades after the fact – to criticisms regarding which actors were selected.

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