We're used to suspending our disbelief at the movies, but sometimes a casting is so wrong that it's a strain even for the best of us – especially when the actor is clearly the wrong age for the role they're playing.
Here are some of the worst offenders...
1. Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin (Beyond the Sea)
This biopic of the velvet-voiced '60s crooner was a bit of a passion project for director Kevin Spacey, who first offered his services to play Darin in 1994. Even then, the studio thought he was too old for the role (the movie depicts the singer's life in his 20s) given that Spacey was already 35. But by the the time film got made, he was 39 and no spring chicken.
That aside, Spacey gives a good performance and was clearly born to play Darin. It's just a shame the film wasn't made 15 years earlier.
2. Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi)
A weird one this. Ian McDiarmid was only 39 when he first donned the prosthetics as the wizened Emperor Palpatine in 1983's Return of the Jedi. He then returned in 1999 to play a 30-years-younger version of the same character, despite having himself aged by 16 years between films.
AND we found out in Revenge of the Sith that all those crumples on his face in Return of the Jedi weren't actually old age after all, but scars from having his lightning bolts ricochet back on him. Yeah, right...
3. Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi)
Another Star Wars offender. Given that Anakin Skywalker was, what, in his early 20s when he transformed into Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith, and that there's around 20 years between that film and the original trilogy, then it means Luke's pop is in his mid-40s by the time of Episode VI.
Trouble is, actor Sebastian Shaw was 78 when he was cast as the person Luke sees when he removes Vader's helmet for the first time, and looks it – especially after George Lucas had finished digitally erasing his eyebrows. Of course, cynics would say that's because Lucas had no plan all along, but we wouldn't say that, no siree Bob.
4. Sean Connery as Dr Henry Jones (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
We're not going to argue against the casting of Sean Connery as Indiana Jones's pa too strongly, as, well, it's Sean flippin' Connery. But, truth is, Connery WAS too young, technically, to play the father of Harrison Ford, unless Henry Jones Sr was putting it about at the age of 13. (Sir Sean has one son IRL, with a respectable 32 years between them.)
Yep: there are only 13 years separating Sean Connery and Harrison Ford, but given how goddamn RIGHT they seem together, we'll gladly suspend our disbelief with this one.
5. Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano (Joy)
This David O Russell movie about businesswoman and inventor Joy Mangano depicts the divorced mother of two from the lightbulb moment at 34 when she came up with the idea of the Miracle Mop to her millionaire life in her early 40s. A stretch then for lead actress Jennifer Lawrence, who was just 24 when she made this rare misfire from David O Russell.
6. Jessie Royce Landis as Clara Thornhill (North by Northwest)
It must have been quite the slap in the mug for 64-year-old Jessie Royce Landis when she was cast as the mother of 56-year-old Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's spy caper classic. She's pretty scene-stealing as the fabulously acerbic Clara Thornhill but it doesn't stop her and Cary Grant looking more like husband and wife than mother and son.
7, 8 and 9. Most of the main cast of The Graduate
In the Charles Webb novel of this '60s classic, the titular graduate, Benjamin Braddock, is just 21 years old and the cougar he has an affair with is supposed to be in her mid-to-late 40s. But by casting Dustin Hoffman, then 29, as Benjamin and Anne Bancroft, then 35, as the sexually voracious Mrs Robinson, it meant that there were just six years between them.
Similarly, William Daniels, who plays Hoffman's father, was, at 39, only a decade older than Hoffman.
10. Matt Damon as Scott Thorson (Behind The Candelabra)
Liberace's lover was 18. Matt Damon was 42. You're a good actor and all, but you're fooling no one, Matthew.
11. Rachel McAdams as Regina George (Mean Girls)
There's a long tradition of casting 20-somethings as teenagers in Hollywood, of course – we wouldn't have had the careers of Michael J Fox and Matthew Broderick to enjoy otherwise – but Rachel McAdams deserves a mention for being a full ten years-plus past her nominal age in Mean Girls. Regina was probably 17. McAdams was 27. (Lindsay Lohan, meanwhile, was at least a teenager, at 19.)
