Adults Who Played Kids In Movies And Fooled Us All

In the movies, children and teen characters often look nothing like they would in real life. Often these roles go to actors that are really at least a couple of years older than their characters, but there's a fine line: actors that are clearly too old for their roles usually result in mockery from critics and audiences alike.

However, there are many good reasons adults play underage characters. Complying with the strict regulations for hiring a child actor can slow down a film with a tight production timeline. If the role involves mature situations, casting an adult is usually the safest (or only) route. For example, Emilia Clarke was in her 20s when she was cast in Game of Thrones, while her book counterpart is in her early teens. While the character was "aged up" to 16 for the show, casting an actual 16-year-old would have been next to impossible. Finally, some roles just need the serious chops that usually only an older and more experienced actor can provide.

Whatever the reason, adults playing children onscreen is just a fact of life in Hollywood—one that most audiences have learned to accept, as long as the age discrepancy isn't too obvious. Some actors have even played their "child" roles so convincingly that we never had any idea they were actually adults. With that in mind, here's a look at some actors who managed to fool everyone.

Casting directors frequently "age up" slightly when picking actors to fill roles in teen movies, and Amy Heckerling's 1995 coming-of-age comedy Clueless is a pretty classic example of this. In fact, most of the main Clueless cast members were slightly older than the characters they played in the movie. At the start of the film, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is 15 years old, while Silverstone herself was 17 at the time. Similarly, Josh (Paul Rudd) is a college undergraduate student, while Rudd was 25 during filming. However, the one Clueless star that really fooled audiences was Stacey Dash, who plays Cher's best friend Dionne.

If you've seen Clueless, you might have assumed Dash was around the same age as her onscreen classmates. In fact, the actress was actually 28 when she played the 16-year-old Dionne. What's more, Dash went on to reprise her role in 62 episodes of the Clueless television series spinoff from 1996 to 1999. While the teens do grow older during the course of the show—which culminates with their high school graduation—that still left Dash (then in her early 30s) playing an 18-year-old Dionne when the series drew to a close.

One of the most impressive examples of adults cast as children from recent years comes from the 2008 fantasy film City of Ember, based on the similarly-named 2003 novel by Jeanne DuPrau. Saoirse Ronan plays Lina Mayfleet and Harry Treadaway plays Doon Harrow, the two main protagonists of the film. While their onscreen ages aren't explicitly mentioned in the movie, DuPrau fans will likely know that Doon and Lina are both 12 years old in her book. At the time, 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan was relatively close in age to the character she played in City of Ember—much unlike Treadaway. Although you'd never be able to tell from watching him on the big screen, he actually turned 23 while filming this movie.  

Director Les Mayfield's 1992 teen comedy Encino Man was mostly panned by critics for its silly plot, but that didn't stop the film from becoming a huge success at the box office—earning over $40 million on just a $7 million budget. After an earthquake, geeky high schoolers Dave (Sean Astin) and Stoney (Pauly Shore) discover a frozen teen caveman (Brendan Fraser) in Dave's backyard. The boys name their cool new prehistoric buddy "Link," and take him to school with them. Naturally, crazy hijinks ensue.

It may be a teen comedy, but the stars of Encino Man weren't actually teens. At 20 years old, Astin was the youngest, while Fraser was 23 and Shore was 24. In this case, Shore's casting is a classic example of the "willing suspension of disbelief." In the early '90s, anyone who'd seen Shore's MTV show Totally Pauly already knew he definitely wasn't a teenager, but that didn't matter to Encino Man audiences. Why? Teens still flocked to theaters because they loved Shore's alter ego, The Weasel—who personified the SoCal surfer style, laid-back 'tude, and dude-speak slang. The Weasel was the "Spicoli" of the '90s, and Shore used the persona at every opportunity. This ageless character was a perpetual teenager, one teens could identify with—making Shore's actual age completely irrelevant.

In the 1989 biodrama My Left Foot, celebrated actor Daniel Day-Lewis portrays the early life of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown. Based upon Brown's autobiography of the same name, the film chronicles his life story from infancy to the threshold of adulthood. Brown was born with severe cerebral palsy, which causes tremors and other coordination problems in the arms and legs. In Brown's case, the sole exception to this affliction was his left foot—which he could control to an impressive degree, and spent years teaching himself how to write and draw with it.

Irish actor Hugh O'Connor plays a young version of Christy Brown near the start of the film, but Day-Lewis takes over later as Brown reaches adolescence, and won an Oscar with his utterly convincing performance. In manner and appearance, Day-Lewis truly embodied Brown in every way—despite actually being 15 years older than the character he was playing. You read that right: Daniel Day-Lewis was 32 when he played the 17-year-old Brown in My Left Foot.

In the classic 1987 romance Dirty Dancing, recent high school graduate Frances "Baby" Houseman (Jennifer Grey) spends a summer with her affluent family at a resort in the Catskill Mountains, where she meets dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze). After Baby agrees to fill in for Johnny's dance partner Penny at an upcoming performance, she and Johnny grow closer as they practice together and help Penny out of a tough situation.

She may have been playing a fresh-faced 17-year-old, but Grey was no "Baby" when she appeared in Dirty Dancing. Although she definitely looked like a typical American teenager, the actress was actually 27 years old while playing Baby—which would become one of her most widely remembered roles.