History Main / HollywoodOld

* Speaking of Miss Lansbury, while their ages are not given in the film, she played Lawrence Harvey's mother in ''Film/TheManchurianCandidate'' despite being only three years his senior.

* The Alfred Hitchcock film ''{{Film/Marnie}}'' plays with this. Louise Latham was only about nine years older playing the mother of Creator/TippiHedren. This was for the sake of appearing in a flashback sequence to Marnie's childhood. However the old age make-up she wore for the present day scenes was so convincing that when she appeared without it for the flashbacks, the crew thought it was a different actress!

* Margaret Hamilton was YoungerThanTheyLook and so got cast to play old spinsters and other elderly roles in Hollywood. Her most famous role in ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' was filmed when she was only mid-thirties. Lines from Auntie Em in the Kansas portions suggest that she's playing someone much older than her real age.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E6TheAztecs "The Aztecs"]], the First Doctor has an AccidentalMarriage to a woman we find in what's sort of an Aztec retirement village. The actress is ''younger than the one playing the Doctor's granddaughter.'' You'd think they could at least get a woman over ''thirty'' to play a woman over sixty.

* In ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'', Agent Smith doesn't look a day older in the episode "Phone Home", despite it taking place ten years after his younger self was first shown. Also, Young!Stein looks the same at 42 as he does as a college student.

* In the WesternAnimation/GrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy episode “The Grim Show”, Grimm’s favorite horror hostess Atrocia, an Elvira parody, is being forced to retire because she’s turning 30, and no one wants to watch “an old bat like her” anymore.

* ''Film/MyCousinVinny'': Vinny Gambini's fiancée Mona Lisa Vito likely falls under this category even though her age is never stated. Creator/JoePesci (Vinny) was well into middle age during filming, while Creator/MarisaTomei (Lisa) was only in her late twenties. Since Lisa rants to Vinny about how her niece is getting married before she and Vinny and that her [[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking biological clock is ticking]], Lisa is likely meant to be quite a bit older than the actress playing her.

** The pilot has 67-year-old [=DeForest=] Kelley playing 137-year-old Admiral [=McCoy=] (although he does look pretty withered).

** Captain Picard himself was consistently described in the original series bible as a man of about mid-fifties in age. This age was given precisely so that he would not be an ActionHero type captain, and would, therefore, act like a real starship captain relegating all of the action stuff to a younger first officer (in an attempt to address a common criticism of the original series depiction of Captain Kirk). The Star Trek Encyclopedia by Mike Okuda gives Picard's birth year as 2206. Being that the first TNG episode is set in 2363 or 2364 means that Picard is about 12 years older than Patrick Stewart was at the time he began playing the role. Stewart was only 45 at the time but Picard started at about age 58. The Star Trek Universe has already established that humans remain in their prime a bit longer. Of course, given that Patrick Stewart looks almost exactly the same over two decades later, it was probably appropriate that he be aged up a bit.

* ''Film/Moonstruck'': Nicolas Cage was 23 at the time of the film's release, yet his love interest is 37 (played by then-42 Cher), and his older brother is 42 (played by 54-year-old Danny Aiello). Although Cage's character's age is never mentioned in the film, it seems to be trying to pass him off as being in his 30s, as there's never a hint of any substantial age gap between himself and either Cher's character or his brother, and Cage had a mature enough appearance to pull it off.

* In TheNewTens, when the annual Hall of Fame inductions came around, it became increasingly suspicious at how much younger the female inductees were compared to the men. The initial women inducted into the Hall of Fame were Wrestling/TheFabulousMoolah, Wrestling/SherriMartel, Wrestling/MaeYoung and Wrestling/WendiRichter - who were indeed older, and the younger two (Wendi and Sherri) were in their late forties and had been retired for nearly two decades. The next inductees [[Wrestling/TammyLynnSytch Sunny]], Wrestling/TrishStratus and {{Wrestling/Lita}} were much younger (their late thirties in fact) and, given Sunny's status as MsFanservice when she was in WWE, may have been sending [[ChristmasCake mixed messages]]. Wrestling/BethPhoenix and the Wrestling/BellaTwins' inductions came as a shock both because of their youth (Beth at 36 was the youngest inductee, beating Trish's record when she went in) and how soon the inductions came after their retirements - Trish, Lita and Sunny had been gone from wrestling altogether for nearly a decade, whereas Beth and the Bellas had only a couple of years out of the company and were the same age as some of the women still wrestling actively in it. Of the other female inductees - {{Wrestling/Ivory}} and {{Wrestling/Jacqueline}} were in their mid-fifties while Wrestling/TorrieWilson and Wrestling/MollyHolly were both 43 at least.

* ''Film/MyCousinVinny: Vinny Gambini's fiancée Mona Lisa Vito likely falls under this category even though her age is never stated. Creator/JoePesci (Vinny) was well into middle age during filming, while Creator/MarisaTomei (Lisa) was only in her late twenties. Since Lisa rants to Vinny about how her niece is getting married before she and Vinny and that her [[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking biological clock is ticking]], Lisa is likely meant to be quite a bit older than the actress playing her.

* In ''Series/TheLastKingdom'', Queen Aelswith's character is supposed to be a middle-aged woman in her early-to-mid 40s and 50s throughout most of the show, and was the mother of Prince (and later King) Edward, who was supposed to be in his mid-to-late 20s and 30s. The actress who played her character, Eliza Butterworth, was actually only between 21 and 28 years old during the show's run.

* In ''Series/JesusOfNazareth'', Creator/OliviaHussey plays the Blessed Virgin Mary, who appears to remain the same age until after The Crucifixion.

# [[PlayingGertrude The actor is far younger than the character is at any point in the story]].

When a Hollywood Old character has teenage or adult children, the age difference may become a PlayingGertrude.

* ''Sara Dane'': At the beginning of the movie, Sara is 18. The actress looks the part. However, the movie spans most of Sara's life, without the actress ever showing any signs of aging. Halfway through the movie, she has drifted into Hollywood Old territory. And at the end, she even has children [[PlayingGertrude who look older than she does]].

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' uses this this to give off the effect of PlayingGertrude [[SubvertedTrope without actually invoking it]] when they introduced the character of Sheila Porter, the biological grandmother of Lieutenant Benson's adopted son Noah. Said character is played by Brooke Shields, who is a year younger than Mariska Hargitay; the reason PlayingGertrude isn't in effect is because Noah's biological mother ''was'' intended to be young enough for it to not be implausible for Shields to play her mother, only for Shields's character to be as old as she apparently was when having her.

* ''Series/{{LOST}}'': With all the flashbacks [[spoiler: and flashforwards and time travel]] going on, the same character can be Hollywood Old and looking too young in the same episode. In later seasons this is sometimes averted by making the same character be played by different actresses (who look really similar but with a clear age difference) in different time periods. This series contains several cases of PlayingGertrude that are NOT also cases of Hollywood Old.

* Wrestling/MickieJames highlighted the double standard in her second run with WWE, where she was treated like she was "too old" and pressured to retire even though she was only 41 during her second release. For comparison - when {{Wrestling/Edge}} returned in 2020 at 46, he enjoyed a main event push and Royal Rumble win during his return. Mickie never held a title in her second run nor was she pushed in any meaningful way. She mostly just did jobs for younger women.

* Creator/GuyPearce appears with a quite unconvincing makeup job to play the very aged Peter Weyland in ''Film/{{Prometheus}}''. Footage of Weyland as a young man had been shot but was cut from the film and only appears on its website.

* In ''Film/SupermanReturns,'' Lois Lane was the mother of a 5-year-old and was experienced and established enough in her career to have won a Pulitzer Prize. She was played by then-22-year-old Creator/KateBosworth. Especially jarring as she was meant to be the same character played by Margot Kidder with over five years more added since the events of ''Film/SupermanII''.

* In ''Film/{{Exodus}}'', Barak Ben Canaan and his brother Akiva are both played by actors in their fifties (albeit both David Opatoshu and Lee J. Cobb were well-known for being YoungerThanTheyLook). Their age in the film is never explicitly stated. In the book, Barak was eighty and Akiva two years younger.

* In the stage version of ''{{Theatre/Cats}}'', Grizabella is meant to be an old cat who is [[IWasQuiteALooker long past her glamorous prime]]. Her song "Memory" is in fact about her GloryDays. The 2019 film adaptation casts Creator/JenniferHudson [[spoiler: who was thirty-seven]].

* The main trio at the end of ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Part 2''. It's supposed to be 19 years later (putting them in their late thirties), but Harry and Ron only look slightly older and Hermione hasn't aged at all. Ginny does look somewhat convincing though.

!!!'''By Network:'''
* Creator/DisneyChannel sitcom characters are the kings/queen of this:
** ''Series/ANTFarm'' has a principal who is supposed to be horrifically old. She is played by a 50-year-old woman.
** ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'' parodies this with the twins' mother Carey. Her actress Kim Rhodes was in her mid-thirties, which is a reasonable age to the mother of preteens (although [[OlderThanTheyLook she looked a few years younger]]). The twins however would constantly joke about her being old, to her annoyance. The dissonance is clearly meant to be intentional - and in an episode where they plan to make a sitcom about the twins, they cast a twenty-two year old to play the mother (who insists she's "played old" before).
** ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'' has Ms. Emma Tutweiler. She is supposed to be a caricature of an old maid, worrying about being single, [[CrazyCatLady living with her cats]], and one character remarks that she aged since high school in a very tactless fashion. This seems understandable and relatively bearable for a kids show. Except for the fact that she is played by this actress (see [[http://www.tvrage.com/person/id-37981/Erin+Cardillo Erin Cardillo]] and for the costume, it doesn't change anything). This is part of the joke for her.
** Hilariously and wonderfully lampshaded in ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', when addressing the eldest son and daughter's misconceptions about age. Thirty-five doesn't equal middle age. The scene is really cathartic in a form of media which generally displays sexism and ageism in order to pander to a younger audience.
!!!'''By Series:'''

* ''Film/{{Old}}'': Particularly noticeable considering that all the adults' actors stay the same (unlike the kids, who are recast as they age). As a result, Prisca tells Guy that he has noticeable wrinkles when there aren't any visible on his face, the ageing effects are of different speeds and much more variable, and it's mainly noticeable once the characters' hair goes gray that they're supposed to be elderly.

** Happens to Magneto, who is ''62'' by the time of ''Dark Phoenix'', played by a then 41 years old Michael Fassbender. The movie is set in 1992, and as per ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'' the Creator/IanMcKellen version of Magneto is canon and a future version of Michael Fassbender's. Meaning that in the 8 years between ''Dark Phoenix'' and 2000's ''Film/Xmen'' Magneto's age catches up with him at an impressive rate.