this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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There must be some rule of film that forbids 13-19 year olds being on camera. Young children are played by actual children. Elderly people are played by the elderly. But teenagers are almost always someone between 20 and 30 and not an actual teenager. What's up with that?
The labor laws for children (<18) in film are brutal. As they should be. Better to avoid the whole thing unless really necessary. Extras definitely won't be under 18.
Sometimes extras have to be kids, so filming can stretch out a few days.
Knowing there's kids on set can actually be nice, because you know there's only so long they can shoot for, instead of stretching a Friday night out indefinitely. Especially if it's a director like Fincher who is known for doing a lot of takes.
Acted as a kid, mainly in locals and some true crime shows for New Dominion Pictures, back before the true crime mania.
This one lady who was on a lot of the same projects I was on called me "her little guarantee" meaning she got to get home to her kids at reasonable hours because I was on set. Lol
Not to mention you don't want underage actors in explicit scenes. So with shows like euphoria is kind of impossible to use people actually that age
You assume they follow the law
That's exactly where it would be followed.
When they get caught, sure..then they partly their lobby fees and it gets sweeped under the rug. These mega corps don't play by our rules, they have no rules.
Sigh. This is exactly where it's easily monitored (part of the regulation I'm pretty sure), observable, and thus enforceable.
That's what unions are for, which are very strong in the movie business.
Unions are very, very strong in that industry. The regs are followed.
Something that a lot of replies are missing is how quickly and dramatically we change appearance at that age. Imagine if filming runs over a year and the 14-year-old you hired is now a foot taller and the shape of his face changed through puberty. Sure, little kids grow fast, but features don’t change nearly as much, especially for boys in their teens.
That's what happened to Walt in Lost. The actor had growth spurts and couldn't play a 10 years old anymore and they just written his character out.
I'd bet there's a 'sweet spot' for age where the average person watching a movie can mentally overlook the adult in a teen role, while children and elderly can't be portrayed by a different age without it being a deliberate effect choice or farcical (though when I was learning makeup effects, I saw a ~25 year old turned convincingly into a 60+ person). Maybe it has to do with ease of an adult actor compared to a teen, or maybe it's because there are just more of the 'young' adult actors in the pool than readily accessible teenage actors. Maybe the hiring team wants to ensure they have someone who can act without being taught during the production, and the slightly older actors have more proven track records?
Perhaps something related to child labour laws making it more complicated to hire minors?
Shorter days for the kids also increases the cost of making a movie and makes crunch time harder too.
There are certainly incentives for using young adults in place of teenagers.
Unless they’re children?
Or teenagers give a fuck on being a movie star.
Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” features a 13-year-old playing a 13-year-old. He said he wanted to capture the natural awkwardness and self-consciousness that we all experienced at that age.
There's a handful of movies where it totally works. The kids in Stand By Me were all the right age and Rob Reiner got incredible performances out of them. It might be a little bit harder, but it can be done.
Great point and excellent movie. Come to think of it, it was very common through the 80’s. The Sandlot, The Goonies, The Lost Boys…any Cory movies lol
Speaking of King movies, the kids in IT knocked it out the park. King's great at taking you back to your childhood. "Yep, that's exactly how we thought, talked and acted." Sometimes though, his child characters are a bit ahead of their age.
Directors simply like to work with adult actors more than to deal with teenagers.
Younger actors have less experience.
Teenagers are legally required to take longer breaks and can't work into the night.
And if you're planning on a sequel or a series, you have no idea what your actor will look like in 2-3 years.
zits, probably