14 shocking real-life age differences between film pairs: Angelina Jolie played Colin Farrell’s mum in Alexander, and Love Actually’s Keira Knightley and Thomas Brodie-Sangster were only 5 years apart
- Angelina Jolie gave birth to Colin Farrell when she was a one-year-old? Many of our favourite films ask us to suspend disbelief a little too much given actors’ real ages
- Selena Gomez’s co-star Drew Seeley was 26 when he played a high schooler in Another Cinderella Story, and Emma Stone and Colin Firth played lovers despite a 28-year age gap
Does it say more about their looks, or how badly the casting directors wanted them in the film? Some on screen roles are a little too far fetched if we stop to give them more thought.
Here are 14 of the more implausible real life vs character role age differences of the past few decades. But hey, if you’re 33 and can pass for a high schooler like Stockard Channing did in Grease, all credit to you!
1. Alan Rickman and Jim Broadbent in Harry Potter
Alan Rickman was three years older than Jim Broadbent, even though he was supposed to have been his student in the Harry Potter films. Rickman was 63 when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premiered, and Broadbent was 60.
Severus Snape and Horace Slughorn are colleagues in the sixth instalment of the series, so it might not seem off that the actors who played them were only three years apart.
However, in the Harry Potter canon, Slughorn was Snape’s potions professor when he was a student at Hogwarts – which makes the fact that Rickman was older a little odd.
2. Kristen Wilson and Tia and Tamera Mowry in Twitches
Kristen Wilson is just nine years older than Tia and Tamera Mowry, but she played their mum in Twitches.
In 2005, the real-life twins Tia and Tamera played twin witches in the Disney Channel original movie Twitches, and actress Wilson played their mother – even though in real life, she’s only nine years older than the twins.
Tia and Tamera were both 27 when they played 21-year-olds in the film, and Wilson was 36.
3. Will Ferrell and Pierce Brosnan in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
