< Older Than They Look

Older Than They Look/Real Life

This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable.

[when?], [when?], [when?], [when?], [when?]... Almost every entry has a particular celebrity's age as of... some time. These need to be fixed.

Examples of Older Than They Look in Real Life include:

In General

  • In general, anyone who is well below average height can fall under this trope. From the examples below, Frankie Muniz is 5'4" (where the average male height is 5'10"), and Senta Moses is 4'11" (average female height is 5'4"). However, below about 5'2" or so, there is a tendency for actors and actresses to look older than their real age, as they seem like adults the size of young children (or else suggest Miniature Senior Citizens). Danny DeVito (5'0") is a good example of this, having looked to be in his fifties since his mid-thirties (when he was working on Taxi). In cases of dwarfism (e.g., Verne Troyer, 2'7", born 1969), the effects of the condition itself can also cause premature aging.
    • Despite the effects of Parkinson's Disease, Michael J. Fox (5'4") still looks to be in his early twenties much of the time. He was born in 1961.
    • Not despite, because of: people with Parkinson's often look younger than they are because of the associated paucity of expression.
    • Daniel Radcliffe is also about the same height as Frankie Muniz—the producers of Harry Potter and Malcolm in the Middle really struck gold with them (especially now that the cast of Harry Potter are considerably older than their characters), as they were both cast as pre-teens, before they knew what height they'd end up.
    • Kristin Chenoweth. Age 43, 4'11", still looks early 20's-ish.
  • Many Asian and African people often look younger than Caucasians. Some Asians of short stature are sometimes mistaken to be teenagers and even in some cases pre-teens. Some Africans in turn look like they're in their early 20's even well above their middle age.
    • This even caused a problem for a Japanese Idol Singer when she went shopping in an American shop. The shopkeeper refused to process her credit card because she looked underage to him (when in fact she was in her 20's).
    • Also, Latina and Italian women tend to age considerably slower than normal.
    • Likewise, Nordic/Scandinavian people also tend to be padeomorphic.
  • People with Primordial Dwarfism look like toddler-sized Gelflings, despite being in their early teens or, in one exceptional case, their early thirties.
  • Often occurs with some female-to-male trans men, particularly if they're not on hormones.
  • Some autistic people are usually legitimately thought to be younger than they actually are, even if the onlooker does not know that they are autistic, strangely enough.
    • This phenomenon has been attributed to many autistics just not emoting much with their faces, so they tend to develop less wrinkles. The equally common wide-eyed expression (or "the autistic stare") many autistics have might also make them seem childlike.
  • Most of the United States' youth this generation. Seriously. For example, look at a high school student from 15–20 years ago and then look at one today.[when?] You're almost bound to see a big difference. Also, today's preteens often look barely into grade school.
    • Most of the United States' young and middle-aged adults also look younger today than they did 25–30 years ago. Many believe this is due to such factors as decreased smoking rates, better diet (in spite of the Obesity Epidemic) and better medical care. Watch, for example, Mork and Mindy. It's hard to believe Pam Dawber and Robin Williams were both in their 20's when that show was made, as Williams in particular looks to be at least in his mid-40's by today's standards.
    • The same effect can be seen, despite differences in living standards, diet (which include alcohol intake) and income, throughout the world, from Canada to Far Eastern Russia, while those improvements in lifestyle could not have happened that fast, in just 20–30 years, and they would not have affected people who had been mature by then (the generation who are now in their 50s). There is also, as a strange twist of fate to fulfil the theories of motivational speakers, the effect of voluntary aging or non-aging: if one or two generations ago maturity and old age brought higher respect and social position (there were no young college professors or CEOs) some people would try to gain these by accelerating their aging, changing their habits, facial expressions, voices and mentality to appear older. A lot of younger scientists or entrepreneurs from the pre-WWII years cultivated a fedora- or thick-rimmed-eyeglasses-wearing, pipe-smoking, rather weary image more for social reasons and less for sheer funkiness. If nowadays youth is prized, people would try at all costs to delay aging, by taking care of themselves better, keeping in touch with modern language and manners, keeping a modern appearance. Sometimes, as with Cool Old Guy s, they would be the same people.
    • Some of this is likely a perceptual issue based on the association between certain hairstyles, fashions, etc., and the current age of the people who wore them as teenagers (or whatever age). For example, if you see a Flock of Seagulls haircut on a 17-year-old in an old photo and it is currently the year 2015, you may, even without conscious thought, understand that said 17-year-old is currently approximately 50 years old. The "dated" look of the photo and/or elements of style within it likely artificially "age" the subject. However, put that same exact subject in a contemporary hairstyle and a crisp digital photo and he or she may not appear as "old."
  • Neoteny is an evolutionary process whereby an organism retains once exclusively juvenile traits into adulthood.
    • Humans have this trait. We grow up more slowly than other apes, and spend more time in the learning-conducive childhood stage. As adults, we remain childlike by ape standards, with high foreheads, flat faces, and less powerful physiques.
  • Due to advances in plastic surgery and make-up techniques as well as the nature of their jobs, most celebrities tend to deliberately appear younger than what they really are (see the Specific People folders below).

Specific People A-M

To keep this section somewhat organized, examples are listed alphabetically by their surname. Do not add combined examples (listing more than one person simultaneously). Additionally, a link to a recent[when?] picture of the person is advisable, along with their actual age and perceived age, so that it gets the point across.

  • Danneel Ackles (formerly Danneel Harris) was 26 when she signed on to play 16-year old Rachel Gatina on One Tree Hill, but you never would've guessed just by looking at her, even now in her 30s, she looks barely out of high school.
  • Chris Addison in The Thick of It and In the Loop. He looks about twelve but is closer to forty.
  • The French actress Isabelle Adjani. She was born in 1955!
    • This is particularily striking in La Reine Margot, where she plays a 19-year old princess pretty damn convincingly. Despite being 39.
  • Casey Affleck is now thirty-six but looks about ten years younger. This is usually lampshaded in roles where He is acting alongside actors who are older and look it.
  • Keiko Agena was 27 years old when she signed on to play the 16-year old Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls (only six years younger than co-star Lauren Graham), and many fans couldn't believe it even when they learned her real age. In this case, the Dawson Casting worked out fantastically.
  • Freema Agyeman. She looks like she's in her early-to-mid twenties on Law and Order UK (her character has been working for the Crown Prosecution Service for about two years after law school - which she'd have completed at about 22 or 23 - as of series 4), despite the fact that she was 30 when the series premiered.
  • Also Jessica Alba, who looks almost exactly the same today as she did when she debuted in the late '90s. She blossomed early and maintained it all the way today, as she admitted that she already had "womanly curves" at a young age. Regrettably, the downside of this is that this is likely the reason for her complaint that she can't get the more serious roles that she really wants to have. Luckily, the upside of this is that helps keep her in-demand as a product endorser.
  • Damon Albarn from Blur\Gorillaz. In his late twenties he still could have easily passed for a 20–21 years old, and even today he looks at least ten years younger than his age.
    • Speaking of Gorillaz, 2D looks nowhere near his mid-thirties; even Wikipedia states that he "still looks like a teenager". Possibly to do with his spiky blue hair and seeming lack of ability to gain weight.
  • Christian Alvestam, the guy who sang for Scar Symmetry, is 35, but his bald head is the only thing that gives his age away. If he had hair, he could pass for his 20s. Even some of his fans on his official Facebook page stated this one some of his photos.
  • Jyoti Amge, 16, is the world's smallest girl. She is 1'11" or about the size of a 6 month old baby.
  • Jennifer Aniston. Does she look like she’s in her forties?
    • Well, no. Since she was born in 1969, she's in her fifties.
  • Shiri Appleby (of Roswell) is 33 years old as of 2012, and has been convincingly been playing teenagers for over fifteen years.
    • Even though she played a grown woman and mother of the main character on Life Unexpected, she still looked like a teenager!
  • Asia Argento is 36, but looks to be about ten years younger than that. Of course, she is Italian.
  • Billie Joe Armstrong looks like he's in his early twenties. He's actually 40.
  • Hirohiko Araki, as in the maker of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, seems to be aging backwards. Seriously.
  • Rowan Atkinson is 57, but could still pass for early-to-mid forties.
  • Adam Baldwin. Did you realize that he's 50? That means he was 40 during Firefly. How many people really look like this at forty?
  • Jamie Bamber is another one of these. He was 25 years old when he did the first Horatio Hornblower films but passed for a very convincing seventeen. This continued when he went on to work on Battlestar Galactica - he was 30 years old to Katee Sackhoff's 23, but they looked the same age (especially since Katee was playing a character a couple of years older than her actual age). Even now at 39 (which in and of itself is still relatively young), he can convincingly pass for someone in his mid-thirties rather than almost 40.
  • Hard rock singer Alex Band of The Calling practically defines this trope. Look at this picture as carefully as you possibly can. Good. Now try to guess how old he is. Check [dead link] these out if you still aren't sure yet. Most of you are probably going to guess that he's around 15-17. That couldn't be further from the truth. He's THIRTY!! I'm not lying. THIRTY!!
    • It's kind of ironic though, because his voice is extremely old and deep for his appearance. Picture this: Jesse McCartney when he was young with the voice of Scott Stapp from Creed except even lower.
  • Paul Banks of Interpol looks like he's in his early or mid 20s. He's 33.
  • Ditto for Drew Barrymore, who in her mid-twenties, was still able to pass as someone in her mid-teens. She's 37.
  • Actor Dante Basco is currently 36 but he doesn't look like he aged much at all since his role as Rufio in Hook and he was 16 back then, and today he still plays and voices teenage roles.
  • Shirley Bassey was born in 1937. And looks 50-ish. Heck, she looks younger than people born after her first hit (The Banana Boat song in 1957)
  • Warren Beatty is 21 years older than wife Annette Bening (who doesn't look too bad for her age). You'd never know it to look at them.
  • Kristen Bell is afraid she'll be stuck like this for a while. A female actress actually complained she may look younger for years to come. The horror.
  • Monica Bellucci is 47, but doesn't look any older than thirty.
  • Justin Bieber is 18, but he looks 15 at most.
  • Kathryn Bigelow is nearly 60 (Kathryn was 58 when she won her Oscar) but could easily pass for a 30-something.
  • Selma Blair of Hellboy fame is pushing 40 but still looks mid- to late twenties.
  • Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls is 30 as of 2011 but looks barely out high school for many years. She was on Conan recently telling him how she actually has to wear makeup to look older when she goes out and that a teenage boy hit on her when she was at the airport!
  • Brian Blessed is in his 70s but looks decades younger.
  • Ernest Borgnine looks like he's in his late 60s or early 70s. As of 2012, he's 95, and still going strong. His secret to longevity is self-explanatory.
  • David Bowie was 69 when he died... he just escaped the aging process.
  • Terry Bozzio (on the right), longtime drummer for Frank Zappa and co-founder of Missing Persons, is 61 -- ten years older than the also pictured John Stannard, president of Hammerax. This picture doesn't really do him justice, though - he must be seen in action.
  • Sarah Brightman is 51. She looks 40 at best.
  • As mentioned above, Steve Buscemi managed to pass as a 20-something metalhead when he was 36. Today, he's 54 but he looks like he's in his 40s.
  • Rose Byrne is 32 but looks to be in her 20's.
  • Actress Dyan Cannon is 75 but she looks to be in her late 30's - early 40's, apparently she's had a lot of plastic surgery.
  • James Caviezel, well into his 40s, looks like he's in his late 20s.
  • Japanese pro wrestler Cherry (no, not the one that was in the WWE) had a gimmick where, when questioned about her age, would claim she was "Forever 18". However she recently lost a match where she would be forced to show her passport and thus reveal her true age: turns out she was born on May 14, 1974... 37 going on 38! Twenty years older than what she was billed at yet looking far, FAR closer to her gimmick age.
  • Leslie Cheung just doesn't look like he ages. Not even after twenty years Leslie at age 46!
  • John Cho is 39 yet can still convincingly play twentysomethings.
  • Greg Cipes just turned 32? Are you serious?
  • Dick Clark, up until his stroke in 2004, looked no older than 45 years old... at 75. There's a reason he was called "America's Oldest Teenager"... His commitment to youth culture is such that he isn't a member of the American Association of Retired Persons. Even after the stroke, he still looks young for 81. Towards the end of his life, he looked about 60-65.
  • Jackie Chan was born in 1954, but nowadays, he looks like he's in his late 30's.
  • Michael Paul Chan (The Closer) looks no older than 45, despite being 61.
  • Kristin Chenoweth [dead link] is 43 years old. Forty. Three.
  • There's a reason people think Stephen Colbert is a Time Lord. He looks exactly the same now as he did in Strangers with Candy TEN YEARS AGO.
  • Gary Coleman had an autoimmune kidney disease, which, combined with the medications used to treat it, limited his growth to 4 ft 8 in, and his face retained a childlike appearance well into adulthood.
  • Monique Coleman (Taylor of High School Musical) is in her early thirties as of 2011. She got away with playing a teenager while in her mid/late twenties. It didn't help that she was the oldest of the main cast.
  • Chris Colfer is 21 but could pass for quite a bit younger.
  • Sean Connery is a subversion, because yeah, he does look old, no denying that, but he simply hasn't changed a bit from the day they shot Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...and it was twenty-one years ago! See for yourself. Of course, that might not be the best reference point to use, since the production crew went to great lengths to make him look older than he actually was - at 58, he was 17 years younger than the character's implied age, and only 12 years older than Harrison Ford.
  • Alice Cooper is 64, but nowadays, he looks like he's in his late 40s.
  • Anderson Cooper, despite the white hair, looks like he could be in his 20's.
  • Miranda Cosgrove is 18, but could pass for a 9th, or even 8th grader if she tried.
  • Stephanie Courtney, who plays Flo in the Progressive Insurance commercials is 42?!
  • Professor Brian Cox is a 40-something physics professor who looks like a 20-something model.
  • Tom Cruise is pushing 50 but could easily pass for a man of about 35.
  • Benedict Cumberbatch is 35, but can still easily pass for mid-twenties. He is so ethereal and unusual looking that he skews any attempt to classify his age in comparison to more normal appearances.
    • During the UK premiere of War Horse, he asked how old a reporter was because he thought he was about his age. The reporter replied that he was 27, and said Cumberbatch looked even younger than he did.
  • Singer and actress/voice actress Elizabeth Daily is 50 but she looks like she's in her late 20's-early 30's.
  • Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are in their early 40s but anybody who saw them in The Coen Brothers' True Grit (or anything else for that matter) could be forgiven for thinking they're about ten-fifteen years younger.
  • Corina Danila [dead link] , Romanian actress and voice actress in Cars, is 39. Her figure has never changed since 1994.
  • Stacey Dash is 46 and looks 26. She was 28 when she first played Dionne in Clueless.
  • Amy Davidson played the younger sister on 8 Simple Rules despite being six years older then her co-star Kaley Cuoco(who played the older sister).
  • Johnny Depp was born in 1963, but looks like he's in his early 30's.
  • Zooey Deschanel is 32, but can convincingly portray a teenage schoolgirl.
  • Khanh Doan, age 35, looks late teen-ish. Then again, she's Asian.
  • Declan Donnelly once revealed in a magazine interview that he was commonly mistaken for being underage by bartenders while in his mid to late twenties. He's now 34 and the effect is less pronounced, but he still looks quite young for his age.
  • Robert Downey Jr looks surprisingly good for his age, given his years of drug abuse and rough living. In Iron Man, He's in his mid forties and could pass for about ten years younger. This is especially odd as He was in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a few years prior and looked like He was pushing forty.
  • Kirsten Dunst looks hardly any older at the age of 30 than she did when she was a teen star in the late 90s. Go on, look at this - does this look like the face of a woman who's less than a year away from her 30s?.
  • Jason Earles, aka Jackson, is in his 30's and married. He even mentioned on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, that when he takes his wife to dinner fans of the show would go to his wife and say "You must be so proud of your son". Awkward! In the first season of Hannah Montana, he was 29, playing a 15-year old character who looked that age.
    • In The movie "Dadnapped" he looks ridulous trying to play a character who is likely his own age named Merv . Plus coupled with the fact that the primary audience for this movie are people who know him as Jackson from "Hannah Montana" makes it even less believable"
  • Zac Efron (from High School Musical) is in his 20s, but looks teenaged. He said it best in his monologue to his tween girl fans on Saturday Night Live: "If it weren't for you, I'd be some random college student, instead of a college-aged man pretending to be a high schooler." And when he was 14, playing young Simon in a flashback on Firefly (yes, that's him), he looked like he was about 12.
  • Actor Robert Englund, famous for playing horror icon Freddy Krueger, is currently 65. Look at this picture. That is him now. He looks like he's in his early-to-mid-40's at least, and early 50's at most.
  • Anna Faris is in her mid-30s, but she looks at least 10 years younger.
  • Noel Fielding is 37 but looks about 25 and acts like a child.
  • Numerous actors and actresses (almost anyone named in Dawson Casting counts), but Isla Fisher stands out as someone who easily looks ten years younger than her real age.
  • Until very recently, original Ultravox lead singer John Foxx did not look his age. In this video, he's all of 33 (since the single was released in 1980 and he was born in 1947), and in this 1998 VH1 Europe interview he certainly doesn't look fifty-one.
  • Though you hear his voice more than you see his face, voice actor Crispin Freeman totally qualifies. He's 39 as of this writing but looks like he's early- to mid-twenties... just one of many reasons the fangirls love him.
  • There's an entire genre of international porn based on barely-legal girls who appear illegally underage. Obviously, this can get people into messy legal trouble. Columbian-born Lupe Fuentes gained international notoriety when her porn videos very nearly got a Puerto Rican man sentenced to 20 years for possessing child porn. What made the case notable was that it absolutely embarrassed the over-zealous prosecutor who, despite easily available proof online and on-file with the US Federal Government that Lupe Fuentes was indeed already of age, she stubbornly insisted that the actress couldn't possibly be older than 13-14, based on the sworn testimony of several expert witnesses who relied on the Tanner Scale. The defendant was overruled in the presentation of proof-of-age evidence and was only saved when Lupe Fuentes actually travelled from her then-residence in Columbia to personally appeared in court with documentation to prove that she was indeed already 19 years old when said videos were made.
    • The same thing happened in a case involving American pornstar Melissa Ashley.
  • Robert Flynn of Machine Head is 43, but looks like he's in his late 20's at most. Here's proof.
  • Michael J. Fox is 50, but often looks at least 20 years younger. His voice doesn't really help, either; would you believe he was in his 40s when he voiced Stuart Little?
  • Jason David Frank was 31 during the filming of Power Rangers Dino Thunder, but he didn't look like he aged too much since his previous seasons as Tommy and he was in his early twenties back then (well, 19 as the Green Ranger). This was pointed out in the first episode when Cassidy asked if Tommy was really old enough to be a teacher. He responds by saying, 'I can assure you, I'm old enough.'
  • Edward Furlong was 14 years old playing 10-year old John Connor in Terminator, and 21 playing a 16-year old in American History X. Even in his 30's he still has quite a youthful demeanor and high-pitched voice.
  • When Bill Gates was around his twenties, he was often mistaken for being a teen. Even today, he's 57 but could still pass for early-to-mid 40's.
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar was 19, nearly 20 in fact, when Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered. She was baby-faced enough to look astonishingly convincing as a 16-year-old. She's now 35, and has only just begun looking like she's not a twentysomething.]
  • Summer Glau is another Whedon favourite whose small size, slender build, and delicate, childish features let her convincingly play characters who are supposed to be a good ten years younger than her actual age. (At the time of writing, March 2012, she's 30.) In The R. Tam Sessions, a then-23-year-old Summer managed to convincingly play a 14-year old girl.
  • Joshua Gomez, best known for playing Morgan Grimes in Chuck, is 36 years old, but looks like he is in his mid 20's. Here's Proof.
  • Selena Gomez, which can lead to some Squick-ish tendencies as this cover for Another Cinderella Story shows (Selena is 15 at this time, her love interest is played by a 25-year old, and Selena looks younger than she is.)
  • Lucas Grabeel, the guy who played Ryan Evans on High School Musical. He's in his late twenties (about 27 or 28), but pictures make him look about half that age. See for yourself.
  • Heather Graham is 42. In The Hangover, she played a role originally written for Lindsay Lohan, who's sixteen years younger than her.
  • Brooke Greenberg has an unknown medical condition that prevents her from aging. She is really 18 years old but still possesses the body of an infant and the mental capacity of a toddler.
  • Seth Green is pushing 40, but looks, acts, and dresses like he is in his later teenage years to early twenties. This is him at age 38.
  • Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy. This is her on the cover of a 2011 magazine. [dead link] She's 37.
  • Another Buffy alumnus, Alyson Hannigan, was 22 when she took the part of 16-year-old Willow, and 29 when the series ended. Not that you'd have known it, looking at her.
  • Singer and Actress Leisha Hailey was born in 1971 but still looks like she is in her mid to late twenties.
  • Tony Harnell of TNT. Nearing 50, looks mid twenties to early thirties.
  • Bob Harper, one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser, is 45.
  • Laura Harring is 48, and looks almost young enough to be her own daughter.
  • Melissa Joan Hart is starting to look older now, but she played teenage roles for a while.
  • Danielle Harris playing the 18-year old Annie Brackett in the Halloween remake when she was thirty. She's about to turn thirty-five and she could still pass off as someone in high school.
  • Popular professional skater Tony Hawk looks as though he's in his 20's, but was actually born in 1968.
  • Salma Hayek, 45, looks like she's in her 20s.
  • Florence Henderson
  • Shirley Henderson was 35 when she first played the eternally 13-year old ghost Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
  • James Hetfield of Metallica doesn't look a day over 30, even though he's really 48.
  • Actress and voice actress Dana Hill looked like a teenager for most of her adult life, she suffered from Type 1 diabetes which prevented her from growing past a certain age and it tragically took her life at the age of 32.
  • Overlapping with Dude Looks Like a Lady: Hizaki, guitarist for Versailles, is a 33-year-old man who can convincingly pass as a teenage girl.
  • Susanna Hoffs. She's 50 in this picture.
  • Joan Jett absolutely counts. She was born in 1958 and will be 54 later this year (2012). She looks the same age as people who were born when her first band formed.
  • Howard Jones of Killswitch Engage is 41, but looks like he's in his late 20's.
  • Dexter Holland, The Offspring front man - the only thing about his appearance that has changed in the last 25 years is his hair style.
  • Lead singer Hyde of the J-rock band L'arc en Ciel. In this video of one of his live performances, he's the guy in the gray jacket and red tie. Would you believe that he was almost forty in that performance?
  • One of the most common complaints, casting-wise, concerning Modern Family is the character of Haley Dunphy, who's supposed to be 16 but some say her character looks like "a tarted-up 12-year old." The actress portraying her, Sarah Hyland, is 21 years old. According to an interview in Nylon Magazine, she was nearly rejected for the role on the grounds of being too old (she was 18 at the time), only for her manager to assure the casting director, "trust me, she does not look 18." There are even flame wars on her IMDb page regarding her "real age."
  • Koshi Inaba the vocalist of the famed J-Rock band, B'z is currently 47. This is one of his recent photo
  • Hugh Jackman still looks very good for a man in his forties (Born in 1968). In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, his physique is just as impressive as it was when he made the first film ten years ago. Pretty fitting as Wolverine is over hundred years old and still fights like a man in his prime.
  • Samuel L. Jackson, born 1948, certainly does not look like someone who's 64 as of 2012. He looks a good 15 or 20 years younger than that.
    • He wanted to be in the Star Wars prequels because he was blown away watching the first movie in its original theatrical 1977 release when he was twenty-eight.
    • In The Avengers, You would certainly never think he is thirty to thirty-five years older than most of his castmates. Which is especially funny as his character, Nick Fury, took a drug which greatly slowed the aging process and who is still at peak condition.
  • Billy Joel is 63, and he does look kind of old, but that's only because of the hair. The face has stayed the exact same as it was 25 years ago.
  • Vincent Kartheiser, of Mad Men and Angel, was born in 1979 but barely seems to have aged since the mid nineties when he was teen. Even then, he looked younger (Larry Clark asked to see his driver's license before hiring him for "Another Day In Paradise" as he didn't believe he was eighteen at the time).
  • Jens Kidman of Meshuggah, anybody? He's 45 years old as of 2011, but not even his bald head prevents him from looking like he's in his mid-20s. Here's a recent photo.
    • As a bonus, he's the oldest person in the band, but looks the youngest. He even looks younger than bassist Dick Lovgren, who's 14 years younger than him.
  • Aaron Johnson is 22 but could easily pass for a 15 or 16-year old. He's also a dad.
  • Michael Jordan is 49, but he still looks pretty much the same as he did when he started in the NBA, and he was in his twenties back then.
  • Heather Lagenkamp is currently 48 but she doesn't look much older than when she played Nancy in the original Nightmare On Elm Street, during principal filming she was 19.
  • Paul Landers, rhythm guitarist of Rammstein, is in his late 40s, but could easily pass for someone in his early 30s. This what he looked like at age 45. [dead link]
  • Avril Lavigne is 28, but looks and acts at most 18.
  • Nigella Lawson was 44 when this picture has been taken, in 2004. This is a picture from March 2011. She looks even better.
  • Denis Leary hasn't aged noticeably in about twenty years; particularly amazing considering he's a 54-year old Irish chain smoker.
  • Jared Leto is 41. There has to be a picture hidden in his attic.
  • Joseph Gordon Levitt is now 30 but still has the same youthful face he had on 3rd Rock From The Sun.
  • Namgar Lhasaranova looks to be somewhere in her thirties, but her son is twenty, and she claims to have been already singing back in the 1980s. As with many other things about Namgar, her age remains an enigma.
  • Ray Liotta. He was on record saying, "It's the oily skin. It gives you zits when you are a teenager, but then it doesn't wrinkle as you get older."
  • James Lipton may not be the youngest man around, but he certainly doesn't look 86.
  • Heather Locklear is 52, but looks 10 years younger.
  • Alison Lohman could pass off as a teenager, if the dinner party scene in Drag Me to Hell and Big Fish are anything to go by. Her character makes use of this in Matchstick Men.
  • Jennifer Lopez is in her 40s, but she looks at least 10–15 years younger.
  • Ralph Macchio. He was 23 when the original Karate Kid was shot, but looked around 15, and now he is 50, but looks like he's just a bit older than half that age.
    • Even weirder, his voice hadn't even changed yet when the Karate Kid was shot!
  • Gabriel Mann (Nolan from "Revenge") is 40
  • James Marsters, when on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was in his mid-to-late 30's, playing a 20-something vampire. He's still barely aged and is now just shy of 50!
  • Demetri Martin is 38?
  • James Maslow of Big Time Rush looks about 17 or 18, but is actually almost 22.
  • Jessica Erin Martin, famous for voicing Samus Aran in the most recent Metroid game, is about 24, but looks 14, although she somehow was deemed "too old" when she auditioned to play an 18-year old role.
  • Sure he has white hair, but Steve Martin appears to have stopped aging around 30 years ago as of 2010.
  • Chris Matthews of MSNBC appears to be in his early 40s but is 64.
  • Paul Mc Cartney is nearly 70 but doesn't look older than mid fifties.
  • Anthony McPartlin, of the English comedy and television presenting duo Ant & Dec, with the other being Declan Donnelly, was born on November 15, 1975. This picture of him from 2009 certainly does not make him look like he was 34 at the time, looking at least 10 years younger than that.
  • Idina Menzel. One look at this image and I think most would be shocked to know she's almost 40.
  • Eminem (Marshall Mathers) is 40 but could easily pass for half that age.
  • Can anyone believe that voice actor Vic Mignogna is already 49 as of this writing?
  • Andy Milonakis, born January 30, 1976, has a congenital growth hormone condition that makes him look and sound like a teenage boy, despite being 36 as of 2012. Here's a picture of him from 2011, on the set of Waiting.
  • People still have trouble being convinced that Kylie Minogue is 44. Do you believe it?
  • Elizabeth Mitchell is 41, but looks no older than 30.
  • Masako Mizutani. It's no wonder why they're calling her "Japan’s Lady of Eternal Youth."
  • Roger Moore was 45 when he was first cast as James Bond in the 70s. Moore is, in fact, 3 years older than Sean Connery, yet he looked much younger. Though Moore started looking his age by the time his Bond tenure ended over a decade later.
  • Throughout the 90s and early 00s, Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth looked like he was in his early twenties while he actually was in his 30s and 40s, respectively. This applies to his bandmates as well, but then again, given the name of their band...
  • Despite being born in 1953, Rick Moranis looked like he never aged past the age of 26. Being 5'4 in height helps. Nowadays, he's pushing 60, but looks like he's in his forties.
  • RATM and Street Sweeper Social Club guitarist Tom Morello is 46 years old despite not looking older than his mid thirties.
  • Stephen Morris from New Order doesn't look like he's in his fifties.
  • Senta Moses is thirty something, but she could probably pass herself off as a teenager even easier. Her current IMDb photo was taken in 2010...when she was 37.
  • The former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, is 82 and looks like he's in his fifties.
  • Frankie Muniz anyone? He was 17 when he played Cody Banks, Seven-TEEN, playing a 15-year old character who looked like he was twelve. He's now almost 27, and is just starting to look a bit less like a kid in his early teens.
  • Audie Murphy's birthdate is somewhat debated, but it's generally agreed that he had earned all his combat medals by the time he was twenty, looking younger than that, and was probably at least twenty-five when he got his first lead role...as a teenaged delinquent in the b-movie Bad Boy. He spent the next few years as The Trope Kid in various westerns, and then as a thirty-year-old, he played his wartime self moderately convincingly in To Hell And Back. He moved away from late-teens characters after that, but continued to play naive, early-twenties characters fairly convincingly til about 1961, by which point he was in his mid-to-late thirties. He got considerably more weathered-looking after that, due to his outdoorsy lifestyle and the insomnia caused by his PTSD.
  • Cillian Murphy. It is VERY hard to pin his age down. He's 36.
  • Eddie Murphy just turned 50, but he still looks mostly the same as he did in his 20's.
  • In this video is actor Mitchel Musso, who is pranking one of his fans on a TV show. Watch the video and try to guess whether Mitchel or the fan is older. Done? Get this: Mitchel is 20, and the fan is only 15.

Specific People N-Z

To keep this section somewhat organized, examples are listed alphabetically by their surname. Do not add combined examples (listing more than one person simultaneously). Additionally, a link to a recent picture of the person is advisable, along with their actual age and perceived age, so that it gets the point across.

  • Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers doesn't seem to have aged at all in twenty years. He's now pushing 45 and looks in his early thirties at most. This is despite being a member of two of the hardest rocking bands of the last twenty years and having taking an extreme amount of narcotics.
  • Takanori Nishikawa, aka T.M.Revolution: he is 5'3" and maintains the appearance of someone in their early 20's...but in reality he'll be 40 come September 2010. It's been said that he's so short because he didn't eat properly as a child.
  • Chuck Norris looks like he's in his early 40s but he's 71.
  • Chris O'Donnell of Batman Forever and NCIS: Los Angeles fame is 41 (nearing 42) but his face has hardly aged!
  • Adepero Oduye, star of Pariah (not the videogame), plays a 16-year old girl. She's 33. Her on-screen mom Kim Waynes (AKA The Wayans Sister) could count too, seeing as she's 50.
  • Hayden Panettiere is likely to look like a teenager for a long time to come (she's 22). Being known for her lack of height adds to this.
    • Oddly, during her run on Heroes, when she was 18-19, some people thought she was in her late 20's. This was even alluded to when she was a victim in a Punk'd prank when a teen boy's mom confronted her about dating him.
  • Ellen Page is 25, but she could easily pass off as a teenager (and does, in several of the films she's in).
  • Sarah Palin looks about 30, too young to be Bristol's mother, but is 47.
  • Jeffrey Parazzo (a.k.a. Trent Fernandez) was 26 when he was filming his parts as the White Ranger, though most bystanders would probably assume he was in his late teens. Even today, he's 34 but could still pass for his mid-to-late-twenties.
  • Grace Park is 38 years old as of March 2012... hard to believe, isn't it?
  • Pinetop Perkins, the oldest person to win a Grammy, lived to be 97, but looked like he was in his mid-to-late-60s.
  • Jim Parsons turned 39 in March 2012. He looks, at the most, maybe 25.
  • Alfie Patten. The story of a 13-year old being a father is unsettling enough, but when he looks like he's even YOUNGER than that... But it turned out he isn't the father.
  • Adrian Paul looks pretty good for a man in his early 50's. But then, he IS the Highlander...
  • Pauley Perette is 42. The character she plays on NCIS is at least ten years younger.
  • Bernadette Peters is 64 but doesn't look much older than 40.
  • Russian model Olga Petrova is a Hot Mom who is 41, but looks a lot better than many women half that age.
  • When Mary Pickford met Douglas Fairbanks Jr., he thought she was his age and asked whether she wanted to play trains with him. (She did.) She was 15-17 years older than him, and ended up marrying his father.
  • If you go to the YouTube video of Kate Pierson and REM singing Shiny Happy People, you'll almost certainly see a commenter hitting on her. She was 42 when the video came out, and is currently[when?] 64.
  • Rene Pinochet, a Chilean voice actor (best known as Aang), is in his mid-30's, yet he still looks and sounds like a child.
  • Brad Pitt is forty eight years old?! WTF?!
    • To put this into perspective, He was in The Assassination of Jesse James and aged up by makeup even though Jesse James was ten years younger than Pitt was at the time (Although James' lifestyle made him look older). Think about that. He had to be aged up to play someone nearly a decade younger than himself.
    • Admittedly, Pitt looks fairly age-appropriate in Moneyball. Maybe not his age when filming (47/48) but definitely middle aged.
    • True and it fits the role very well. Still You'd have a hard time believing his age when he shares the screen with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who looks quite a bit older but is actually four years younger than Pitt.
  • Natalie Portman is 30 now, and still looks and sounds 20 years old.
  • Kyla Pratt. She's 24 (as of this writing) but would you know that if you saw her walking down the street? This actually leads to the "Prisoners of Pollyanna" problem, in that Pratt was a prominent younger actress, but because she looks younger than her age, some people expect her to act younger than her age.
  • Prince is in his 50s (53 to be exact, as of this writing), but he still looks the same way he did in the 1980s (which I'm guessing is around late-20s into 30).
  • Eddie Redmayne, recently 30 as of the time of writing this (February 2012), looks like he could easily be ten years younger than his real age - he plays a 20-year-old in Birdsong, and looks completely convincing.
    • Clémence Poésy, Eddie's costar in Birdsong, is only just 29 but looks like she's in her early twenties.
  • Keanu Reeves doesn't seem to have aged at all since the nineties and sure doesn't look like he was born in 1964. In fact, some people think he is immortal and it isn't as crazy a theory as it sounds.
  • Christina Ricci just turned 32 as of 2012. She once complained she usually feels especially vulnerable in regards to her personal safety and security, as she not only looks like child-like, she remains the size of one per contemporary US standards. In her late-teens, she could still bemistaken as someone a decade younger, if this film poster was any indication!
  • Condoleezza Rice is 57, but she looks much younger.
  • Denise Richards is 40. She just escapes the aging process, too.
  • Alan Rickman is 66 years old. Seriously. 66.
  • Italo-disco diva Tiziana Rivale is 51(almost as old as Madonna), but looks late 20's or 30's.
  • Kimmy Robertson was 36 when she appeared on Twin Peaks and appeared in various commercials throughout the late 80s/early 90s. Because of her high pitched voice and stereotypical 80s hair/outfits, she looked like she could pass for a twenty something. Pushing 60, she looks like she could be in her mid 40s to early 50s. http://www.zimbio.com/Kimmy+Robertson
  • Carol Roscoe [dead link] (late 30's/early 40's), who has lately played several Dawson Casting roles, including Sheri in Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World.
  • French comedian Anne Roumanoff [dead link] is 46 and looks a lot younger.
  • Morgan Rowe (a Seattle stage actress, not to be confused with others with the same name), age 41, looks about 15 years younger.
  • This is Paul Rudd in 1995, then almost 10 years later, in 2004, in 2007,in 2009, and now this year (2012). As of this day, the man is 43, and since 20 years the only thing that changed is his hair. Not only can he still pass as being in his mid-twenties: he stopped growing older in his mid-twenties!
  • Winona Ryder just turned forty. If not for her being in the business for over twenty years, it would be easy to think she was closer to thirty.
  • Filipina singer/actress Lea Salonga looked barely into her teens when she originated the role of Kim in Miss Saigon. She was 17 when she auditioned, 18 when the show opened. Now 39, she could easily pass for mid-20's.
  • Andy Samberg is 34, but doesn't look or act a day over 19.
  • Susan Sarandon was born in 1946, and is just as much of a GMILF as Helen Mirren - in fact more so, since unlike Dame Helen she actually has children. And just like Mirren, her tits seem to exist in a place outside space and time.
  • Shakira is 34. Throughout her entire career, she could have easily passed for a teenager. Being barely 4'11" tall also helps.
  • William Shatner is 80 but could pass for 50.
  • Jake Short, the child actor who plays Fletcher from the Disney Channel series A.N.T. Farm. He looks like he's about 10 (see here), but looking at the picture, one would be shocked to know that he's actually 14. This gets confusion from most of his girl fans.
  • Michael W. Smith hardly looks a day over thirty, despite being 52.
  • Slash of Guns N Roses doesn't seem to have aged at all since the 1980's. He's now 46 but doesn't look older than his early thirties.
  • Will Smith still looks remarkably baby-faced in his 40's.
  • Pretty much nobody on the face of this damn planet will ever be 100% convinced that Little Richard is almost 80. This is a recent photo of him. He looks to be in his early 50s at most, despite having no plastic surgery.
  • Identical twin actors Dylan and Cole Sprouse definitely qualify. As of this writing, they are both 19, old enough to be freshmen in college. However, despite this, they barely look old enough to be freshmen in high school. Which is pretty stupid, since they were supposed to be seniors in the later episodes of Suite Life on Deck, but still looked like they were around 14 years old, although able to pass as a little older. And when they were 16 in the first season of the show (playing sophomores), they looked about 11. The fact that their voices took years to crack didn't help either.
    • This led to people believing that they were actually younger than their characters during the third season of Zack & Cody, as their characters were both to be freshmen in high school, but the twins still hadn't hit their first growth spurt and their voices were still undoubtedly childish despite being 15 years old at the time.
  • Ringo Starr just turned 72 years old, but he looks 50 at most.
  • Patrick Stewart is 72, but could easily pass for 50's. Hell, look at the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which he's 47, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell him apart from today. Which is really a subversion, because despite some extra wrinkles and filling out a bit, he looked the like the same old bald man we know and love when he was in his 30's. Which makes the younger, full haired cadet seen in the episode Tapestry hilarious.
  • Sarah Silverman is 41 - this is a 2012 picture [dead link] . She looks a decade or more younger.
  • Gwen Stefani. Does she look like she’s in her forties?
  • Sting is 60 and doesn't look much older than 45.
  • Regardless of whether it's due to expert plastic surgery or really fortunate genes, one would probably be shocked if they knew that the lovely Meryl Streep is 63.
  • Sarah Stiles (Joanne in Vanities: The Musical, as well as Lucy and Kate Monster in Avenue Q) is 32 (30 at the time of the off-Broadway production of the former), but looks and sounds teenage.
  • Could I direct your attention to a certain prominent politician from a certain South East Asian country? This is her in 1995, and this [dead link] is her immediately after release from house arrest in 2010. Did I mention she's 65?
  • Anyone who caught his cameo on 30 Rock would probably be surprised to learn that Aaoron Sorkin is fifty.
  • Taylor Swift is 21 going on 22 this year, although she could easily pass as 16 or 17. If anything, she looks younger now than she did when she was actually young.
  • Mr. T looks exactly the same today as he did over 25 years ago.
  • Arika Takarano, the lead singer of ALI PROJECT. She looks like this.. She was also born in 1963. SHE'S FORTY-SEVEN.
  • David Tennant. Take a nice long look at his picture. He's 40.
  • If Emma Thompson is 52, then whoever posted this is Mickey Mouse.
  • Tiffany Thornton from So Random looks about 16–19 years old, but is actually 26.
  • Jennifer Tilly, 53, looks like she's in her 30s.
  • Ashley Tisdale is 26.
  • Marisa Tomei is currently 48 at this time (2012) but looks much younger.
  • Alessandra Torresani (known from Caprica) looks about 14-15 but is really 25 (born 1987). Oh yeah, she has a black belt in taekwondo and has shown in a video interview with Wired that she's able to kick ass in 6 inch heels, her Combat Stilettos.
  • Jerry Trainor from iCarly. He's playing Spencer, a man in his mid to late twenties, but he looks like a college student and acts like one. Jerry is 34.
  • Alex Trebek is 72, but doesn't look much older than 50. It's probably because his mustache is gone.
  • Tina Turner is now 73 and she doesn't look old in this 2011 photo. Subversion in the fact she never looked young either, even in her pictures from 4 decades ago she has the same fortyish appearance.
  • Sofia Vassilieva (known from Medium) looks almost too young to be a teenager but is really 20 (born 1992).
  • Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance is 33 but still somehow seems to age backwards. This is despite all the drinking, drugs, coffee, and his ridiculous smoking habit.
  • Anyone who saw Avatar thought Sigourney Weaver looked damn fine. She's 62.
  • Betty White is 90 as of 2012, but looks to be in her mid 60s.
  • Porcupine Tree mainman Steven Wilson is 43 but could probably still pass for someone in their mid- to late-twenties.
  • Reese Witherspoon is 36 but looks at least 10 years younger.
  • Weird Al Yankovic is 52, but doesn't look any older than his mid-thirties. In fact, thanks to removing his ridiculous glasses, afro, and mustache he had in the 80's and 90's, he actually looks younger than he did when he was actually young.
  • Who knew Masaaki Endoh, Hiroshi Kitadani and Masami Okui of JAM Project are in their 40's?
  • Jack McBrayer of 30Rock is 38 but doesn't look past his mid-twenties. His character Kenneth is implied to be about 350 years old.
  • Roger Daltrey is 68. This guy is pushing 70?
  • Julianne Moore is 51, and hasn't aged noticeably in almost twenty years. This is especially bizarre when you consider how white her skin is; skin that pale generally doesn't age well. Also, her face tends to emote very well in movies, which is really hell on your skin. The only possible explanation at this point is she's a vampire.
    • On the other hand, it's been said that very pale people (especially redheads) can actually age better. Namely, very pale people are also prone to more frequent and more severe cases of sunburn than the average non-redhead. After a few hellish encounters, most of them realize that's it's probably in their best interest to keep their alabaster backsides indoors and take more preventative measures against the sun. Marcia Cross and Reba McEntire are equally famous for being both pale and immortal.
  • Owen Wilson. 43 years old, looks late-20's to mid-30's.
  • Say what you want about the quality of the movie, or his acting in it, but it's definitely a shock to find out that Tommy Wiseau was 48 when he made The Room.
  • Rachel Weisz is 42? 32, maybe.
  • Elijah Wood, as of the time Part 1 of The Hobbit releases, will be 32 years old. He doesn't look much older than he did when he was 18 years old and working on the Lord of the Rings films.
  • Milo Ventimiglia is 35 but looks 25 at the most. This made his relationship with Hayden Panettiere a little more unsettling in addition to the fact she was playing his niece.
  • Jennifer Jason Leigh is 50! Look at her page picture, that's recent.
  • Reba McEntire looks way too young for 57. Early 40s, maybe.
  • Voice actress Tara Strong is 39, but looks like she's in her late 20s.
  • Doug Hutchison played Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. Percy is supposed to be 21; Hutchison was 39 years old at the time. He told Frank Darabont that he was in his early/mid 30s. When he went to audition for The Salton Sea, the director told him he was 'too young', resulting in Hutchison having to show him his drivers license which proved his age. He's now in his fifties but still looks like he's maximum in his 30s if not younger. All of this events seems to be even more interesting if we remember that his character in The X-Files, the first Monster of the Week Eugene Victor Toomes was a mutant without aging process who looked absolutely the same in 1930s, 1960s and 1990s thanks to eating human livers ripped off alive.
  • Lead singer of Mindless Self Indulgence, Jimmy Urine (actual name James Euringer) looks like he's at least in his early-to-mid 20's, but he's actually in his 40's. Doesn't stop the fact that he has a massive amount of fangirls.
  • Daryl Hall (b. 1946) and John Oates (b. 1949) of Hall & Oates, pictured here in 2008. Seriously, they look better than most people half their age.
  • Keith Richards, while not the world's most attractive man, certainly doesn't look like he's almost 70. Of course, the reason for this is obvious; he's well preserved.
  • The late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno until about 2007 looked no older than 50, despite being 80 at the time. But injuries from being very involved in practice (despite allegations of him being a powerless figurehead) have allowed for accidents to happen. After a myraid of injuries, he still doesn't look 85, but instead closer to 70.
  • Carrie Paff looks about 15–20 years younger than her actual age (late 30s/early 40's). Blondes don't usually age that well.
  • LL Cool J is in his early 40's, but doesn't look much older then 30.
  • Denzel Washington, a few grey hairs aside, barely seems to have aged since He was in Cry Freedom back in 1987. He's now 58 and seems perfectly at home in action films with actors twenty to twenty-five years younger.
    • The Book of Eli would like to argue otherwise but at the same, it was the post-apocalypse.
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