The Character/Actor age thing

[maciam]

Sometimes you can tell just by looking at the actotrs that they are in their mid 20's, no need to even look it up.

I liked the whole thing with Annie and Jai beeing so insecure, and not as confident as most of the others were.

Like it when we actually get to see actors and characters grow in their rolls over years, and not beeing so very confident as many of them seems to be already when they arrives.

Also the same with Tasha and Robbie, they also grew into their rolls.

Soon ( in a few years) we will see the same thing happen to VJ. We have known this character since birth, and got to see him grow.

[cadyctslover]

There's no need for it with soaps, except for the laziness of a company that wants 'experienced' actors. It produces performances that lack naturalness at least, and that often stick out like a sore thumb in scenes with actors playing their real age. Romeo and Ruby are prime examples of it in recent times.

The guy who plays Xavier is a good example. He's much closer to the age of the character he portrays, but when he first arrived he was very inexperienced. It was only in 2010 that the actor became more relaxed and confident, and his acting improved immensely.

[Julez]

There's no need for it with soaps, except for the laziness of a company that wants 'experienced' actors. It produces performances that lack naturalness at least, and that often stick out like a sore thumb in scenes with actors playing their real age. Romeo and Ruby are prime examples of it in recent times.

The guy who plays Xavier is a good example. He's much closer to the age of the character he portrays, but when he first arrived he was very inexperienced. It was only in 2010 that the actor became more relaxed and confident, and his acting improved immensely.

I really like that. It actually suits most of the kids who come to the Bay - that they start off nervous and then slowly settle in.

[Miranda]

Yes, I agree Xavier is a good example. However I think Casey and Dex are naturally good actors from the start, and they are very near their real ages (I admit I did look them up).

I think Romeo/Luke is the stand out example of bad casting. It was obvious to me that he wasn't 17/18 when he came along, I did look up his age but wasn't surprised when I found out he's the same age as Heath/Dan. I think the writers were coy about Romeo and Annie kissing as well, cos of the age difference. As far as I remember, they never properly kissed, they just stood together in a way that made it look like they were.

I think Ruby/Rebecca is pretty convincing. She is small and girlish looking, it amused me that even when Casey was kneeling up on the sand in front of her that time, he was STILL taller than her! However, I'm 42 so I must admit I can't spot subtle differences between teenagers and early twenties. Maybe she looks 23 to a viewer in their teens, I don't know.

[Barbara]

I think one reason why they like to cast older actors to play teenagers is for a legal reason. Adults can work full time whereas minors can only work a certain amount of hours per day or week. At least, that's how it works in the USA and it makes sense IMO. The teenage characters have quite a lot of screen time on Home and Away and if they only cast young actors they wouldn't be able to use them as much.

I'll admit that in Romeo/Luke's case, I found it a bit weird when I first saw him wearing a school uniform as he looked too old to still be in school but I never found it strange in Ruby/Rebecca's case. I don't have a problem with older actors playing teenagers but it is more realistic when the actor is in his late teens/early 20s or looks younger than he really is. Obviously, if an actor looks much older than a teenager, than it can be weird and even unrealistic.

[maciam]

I think one reason why they like to cast older actors to play teenagers is for a legal reason. Adults can work full time whereas minors can only work a certain amount of hours per day or week. At least, that's how it works in the USA and it makes sense IMO. The teenage characters have quite a lot of screen time on Home and Away and if they only cast young actors they wouldn't be able to use them as much.

I'll admit that in Romeo/Luke's case, I found it a bit weird when I first saw him wearing a school uniform as he looked too old to still be in school but I never found it strange in Ruby/Rebecca's case. I don't have a problem with older actors playing teenagers but it is more realistic when the actor is in his late teens/early 20s or looks younger than he really is. Obviously, if an actor looks much older than a teenager, than it can be weird and even unrealistic.

I know younger kids can't work to many hours, but where is the limit to this??

I remember Home and away had kids different ages working without problems, and you never even noticed they where gone..

Look at it now, VJ has almost no scenes at all compared to Sally and Sam when they were 8-14 ( around VJ's age now)..

I do think Ruby is the one most suitable to play a teenageer these days..

[Julez]

I think this is why Xavier, Dex & Casey work so well as a trio - because they have genuine chemistry prob due in part to their real ages. Romeo is an outlier.

[Red Ranger 1]

To be honest, it's not really something that bothers me.Sometimes you'll get an actor who's obviously older than they appear to be, either because of the way they look or because you've seen them in something else, but I'll just tend to laugh for a bit and then in a couple of episodes I'll just accept that it's a television programme and they're however old the script says they are.I wouldn't have known Rocco or Ruby were in their 20s in real life if I hadn't been told and I was shocked to hear that Cassie was 22.(I remember my 21-year-old self looking on Peta in a kind of quasi-paternal/big brother way, only to learn the actress was 22 playing 17 and thus older than me!)To be honest, I was more concerned about Hugo clearly being older than late 20s, mainly because the actor had played a 20-something in Neighbours a decade and a half previous.

I can see both sides of the argument, that on one side it's good to have a convincing teenager but on the other it's good to have an experienced actor.Charlotte and Jordan could carry it off and were both decent actors from the off, David Jones-Roberts was obviously inexperienced and took until late 2009/early 2010 to come up to scratch(although he always worked well with Jordan, possibly because they were around the same age).Luke Mitchell, it has to be said, often seems like the worst of both worlds, being neither a teenager nor a particularly good/experienced actor, and was probably hired because the show needed a new heartthrob.I think that child labour laws probably come into effect when it comes to under-18s and particularly under-16s.Not sure how bothered they are about showing teen actors in relationship situations:There was a rumour they put the brakes on the Ric/ Matilda romance for nearly two years beecause of the age gap between the actors(Indiana 15, Mark 19)but they didn't seem to have any trouble showing Xavier and Freya getting up close and personal when he first appeared(some people noted at the time that they seemed to show more with them than adult couples)and Annie and Romeo kissed quite a lot during her 2010 stint.(I remember a recent interview with long standing Coronation Street regular Simon Gregson, who plays Steve, recalling before his first screen kiss he reminded the oblivious producers "I'm a 15-year-old boy having to kiss a 22-year-old woman!")

It is something that afflicts UK soaps as well and it is very obvious when you know the actors: Hollyoaks went through a period of hiring actors who played school leavers in Grange Hill to play 14-year-olds, Waterloo Road seems to have developed a habit of hiring people who've played young adults in soaps as school children.Although inevitable since the story took place over a number of decades, The Forsyte Saga made a few people laugh by trying to make out 30-year-old Gillian Kearney was 17, a decade or two after she played a college student in Brookside.And forgotten ITV series A&E so completely scuppered rival show Holby City's casting of Sheridan Smith as a creepy schoolgirl by giving her a one scene guest spot as a nurse, you have to wonder if it was deliberate...

[maciam]

I aslo thought Ian Meadows aka Rocco was closer to the age of the character that the real age.. think I read somewhere he's born in 1978.

In real life there's only an 8 year difference between Esther Anderson and Rebecca Breeds.. On the show they play mother/daughter..

Esther is 32 and Rebecca is 24.

How big was the age different between Bobby and Alan??

They played half sister/brother on the show in the early years.

Didn't they go to school together?

[Red Ranger 1]

I aslo thought Ian Meadows aka Rocco was closer to the age of the character that the real age.. think I read somewhere he's born in 1978.

How big was the age different between Bobby and Alan??

They played half sister/brother on the show in the early years.

Didn't they go to school together?

IMDb has Ian Meadows as born 1983, making him 23 when he was on the show.

Bobby and Alan were in the same year at school, Barbara was pregnant with Alan when Bobby was conceived so there would have been less than nine months between them.If you mean the actors, Nicolle Dickson was 19 but I haven't found a date of birth for Simon Kay(aka Simon Bossell).