Bianca Lawson was 31 years old when she started playing 16-year-old Maya St. Germain on Pretty Little Liars, a 15-year gap that is hard to explain away. What makes it even more remarkable is that this wasn't the first time Lawson had played a high schooler well into her thirties, having done the same on several other teen dramas throughout her career. At a certain point, it stops being a casting choice and starts being a superpower. | © ABC Family
Carey Mulligan was 27 when she played Daisy Buchanan, a character written as an 18-year-old socialite in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. The nine-year gap doesn't create any real issues on screen – Mulligan's ethereal quality fits the role well enough that the age question rarely comes up. It's one of those casting decisions that simply works, even if it doesn't quite add up on paper. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Leonardo DiCaprio was 28 when he played Frank Abagnale, a con artist whose story begins at 16 years old. It's a 12-year gap, though DiCaprio has always had a youthfulness to his screen presence that made the early scenes easier to buy into than they probably should have been. Spielberg clearly wasn't bothered by the numbers, and neither were audiences – the film was a hit, and DiCaprio's performance remains one of his most charming. | © DreamWorks Distribution
Whoopi Goldberg was nearly 30 when she filmed the early scenes portraying 14-year-old Celie, a gap that could have easily undermined the film's emotional authenticity. Instead, her performance was so raw and deeply felt that it earned her an Academy Award nomination and became one of the most celebrated film debuts in Hollywood history. The age difference barely registers when the acting is that good. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Rachel McAdams was 25 when she played Regina George, the reigning queen of North Shore High School. It's a notable age gap, though McAdams played the role with such precision that the character feels completely at home in a high school hallway. Interestingly, she wasn't the only cast member older than her character, Mean Girls was largely a film about teenagers made by adults playing teenagers, and it worked out just fine. | © Paramount Pictures
Napoleon Dynamite is supposed to be a socially awkward high school student, but the actor playing him was 26 at the time of filming. The gap is noticeable in hindsight, though Napoleon's deliberately odd mannerisms and appearance made it easy to suspend disbelief while watching. It's one of those performances so committed and specific that the actor's real age feels like a footnote. | © Searchlight Pictures
Matt Damon was 43 years old when he played 17-year-old Scott Thorson in Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic. That's a 26-year gap between actor and character – one of the more striking mismatches on this list. Damon's performance was well received, but the casting required a significant suspension of disbelief right from the opening scenes. | © HBO
Ian Somerhalder was 31 years old when he first stepped into the role of a vampire teenager, and by the time the show wrapped eight years later, he was 38 – still playing the same ageless teen. The vampire mythology gives the character a built-in excuse for not aging, but it doesn't quite explain why the actor looked so convincingly adult from day one. It's one of the longest-running age gaps in TV history, and somehow nobody seemed to mind. | © Warner Bros. Television
Cher was cast as Meryl Streep's mother in the Mamma Mia sequel, which sounds reasonable enough until you notice that Cher is only three years older than Streep in real life. The two were 72 and 69 at the time of filming, making the mother-daughter dynamic a bit of a stretch by any measure. It's the kind of casting that only works because both actresses are so watchable that the audience is happy to just go along with it. | © Universal Pictures
Florence Pugh was 23 when she played Amy March, a character who starts the story at 13 years old. The age gap is hard to miss, especially in the earlier scenes set during Amy's childhood. Pugh's performance was widely praised regardless, earning her an Oscar nomination, but the decade-long difference between actress and character is one of the more noticeable casting stretches in recent memory. | © Sony Pictures Releasing
Baby is written as a sheltered teenage girl spending the summer with her family, but Jennifer Grey was 27 when she played the role. The age gap between actress and character is significant, though Grey brings enough wide-eyed earnestness to the performance that it rarely registers while watching. It's one of the most beloved coming-of-age films ever made, which is a strange thing to say about a story played out almost entirely by adults. | © Vestron Pictures
Sandy is written as a 17-year-old high school student, but Olivia Newton-John was 29 when she played the role, a 12-year gap that is hard to ignore once you know it. She's far from the only adult playing a teenager in that film, but the discrepancy is particularly striking given how central her character is to the story. That said, her performance became so iconic that most people never stopped to do the math. | © Paramount Pictures
Tobey Maguire was already 27 when the Spider-Man franchise kicked off, playing a character who's supposed to be a teenager fresh out of high school. By the time the third film came around, he was 32, still swinging around in a high school setting that didn't quite match the face wearing the mask. It's one of those casting choices that gets more noticeable the longer the franchise runs. | © Sony Pictures Releasing
Ryan Gosling was 42 when he played Ken, which drew some criticism from people who felt he was too old for the role. It's a tricky argument to make when your character is a plastic doll with no definitive age, and as some pointed out, if Ken were real, he'd be pushing 60 by now. Gosling's performance won most people over anyway, making the age debate feel a little beside the point. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Winona Ryder was 27 when she played an 18-year-old in Girl, Interrupted, nearly a decade older than the character she was portraying. To her credit, it's not something most viewers picked up on while watching. The performance holds up, even if the math doesn't. | © Sony Pictures Releasing
Hollywood has never been great at casting age-appropriate actors, and these performances are proof of that. From 30-year-olds playing high schoolers to actors pushing 40 in teenage roles, these casting decisions required audiences to do some serious math, and even more serious suspending of disbelief.
