Actors Who Seem Like They Were Born Old

Angela Lansbury

Hermione Gingold

Dame Margaret Rutherford

Una O'Connor

Pat Hingle who played Warren Beatty's father in Splendor in the Grass despite only being about 13 years old than him.

Shirley Booth

Ed Asner

OP- DEFINITELY Wilford Brimley. He was ALWAYS old.

Gladys Cooper, until you learn about her early stage career as a bombshell.

Humphrey Bogart.

Ellen Corby

Caroll O'Connor

Jean Stapleton

Maureen Stapleton

Beatrice Arthur

Rue McClanahan

Betty White

Estelle Getty

and Vivian Vance

Steve Martin

Charles Lane. He had a line in It's a Wonderful Life which confused me as a child. "This young man is going to ask George Bailey for a job!". I didn't know whom he was referring to since even then Lane looked older than dirt.

Bill Cobbs owns this thread.

In The Strange One Pat Hingle played a college student...then just a few years later he was in dad roles!!!

Norman Fell

Ellen Corby

Margaret Hamilton

Mary Wickes

G.

Ruth Gordon

R12- Leave our DL ICON Vivian Vance alone.

Helen Lawson

FRED ASTAIRE.

Zara Cully ( MOTHER JEFFERSON)

Clifton Webb

Marjorie Main

Spring Byington

Will Geer

[quote] Spring Byington

She was more a winter.

I was recently watching The Electric Horseman (1979) on HBO. Wilford Brimley was in it. He already seemed OLD in that movie even though he was only in his forties.

Abe Vigoda

Carroll O'Conner was only in his 40's when All In The Family went on the air in 1971. He looked like someone in their SIXTIES!

Walter Brennan. My mom, who grew up in the ‘50s, always said he and Storm Thurmond were old when she was little.

R17 Margaret Hamilton was only thirty-six when she was in "The Wizard Of Oz". Because I'm aware of that, and have seen a great number of her early films, she doesn't register as having always been old.

I'm adding Hume Cronyn & Hayden Rorke to this list.

Kim Cattrall

Sherman Hemsley

Karl Malden ...... Jerry Orbach

DL people there is a video on youtube of They're Playing Our Song (1979) at the Tony's in 1979. Robert Klein was only 36 years old in that video. He looks at least 10 YEARS OLDER.

Gene Hackman

Charles Durning

I second Ed Asner.

Agnes Moorhead ..... Ned Beatty ..... Gavin Macleod

Yvonne DeCarlo

Al Lewis

Spencer Tracy.

Katherine MacGregor ( Mrs. Olsen- Little House On The Prairie)

Wilford Brimley

Dame Judi Dench

Meryl Streep.

Liam Neeson

Leslie Nielsen

John Thaw of Morse. The irony is he died relatively young, only about 60. I was shocked that it meant he was in his mid 40s at the start of the Morse series.

Aline MacMahon

"Margaret Hamilton was only thirty-six when she was in "The Wizard Of Oz".

She looked at least 10 years older than that.

Not Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Most bald stocky men always look much older than their actual ages.

Jason Alexander was only 29 when SEINFELD started!

Richard Dreyfuss

He did an episode of "Bewitched" when he was 19 and looks like he could be in his 30s.

Faye Dunaway seemed MUCH OLDER than 26 when she appeared in the movie Bonnie And Clyde (1967) and MUCH OLDER than 27 when she appeared in movie The Thomas Crown Affair.

Completely agree about Fred Astaire. He was always an old man.

Joseph Kearns and Gale Gordon (Good OLD Mr. Wilsons)

[quote] "Jason Alexander was only 29 when SEINFELD started!"

Wow, R52. I'm sure he did pretty well financially, but no one got the residual/licensing deal that Jerry got. That being said, how wonderful to have that kind of success so early.

Burl Ives aka Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Margaret Hamilton.

R59- You are the 3rd or 4th person to mention her.

George Macready

Orson Welles

John Forsythe

Jim Davis ( JOCK on Dallas)

I read this title as “ Actors Who Seem Like They Were Born Bald.”

R65- You're DYSLEXIC

Thelma Ritter.

Edmund Gwenn

Edward Woodward

Marla Gibbs

Thelma Ritter is a good one, her first film role is her small part in Miracle on 34th Street where she plays the mother of a little boy and she looked like his grandmother (she was in her mid-40s) but she also died relatively young, days before her 67th birthday, but she had looked 67 for most of her career.

Judge Judy.

Ruth Gordon

Jennette McCurdy (from Sam&Cat)

R73-,You're maybe the THIRD person to mention her.

Angela Lansbury

Dabney Coleman

Allison Janney

R45 You fucking bitch. Take a good hard look at my earlier films and it is plain for the world to see you are lying.

Your film debut was playing Robin Williams MOTHER in The World According to Garp very convincingly which was even beyond me back in 1982. Even now I would not pass as dear Robin William's mother.

Poor Maureen Stapleton, mentioned above, played Dick Van Dyke's mother in "Bye Bye Birdie" when she was 38 years old and only six months older than Van Dyke. And she looked the part.

R75, Then it must be true.

Lol at this thread. And Joan Allen.

Jimmy Durante

Ed Begley(not Junior).

Toby Jones

Shirley Temple

R8- She does INDEED look MUCH older than 38 years old in that photo. She also looks like LENS DUNHAM.

"Faye Dunaway seemed MUCH OLDER than 26 when she appeared in the movie Bonnie And Clyde (1967) and MUCH OLDER than 27 when she appeared in movie The Thomas Crown Affair."

I thought she looked her age in "Bonnie and Clyde." She seemed older in "The Thomas Crown Affair" due to the hair and makeup. But she didn't look "MUCH OLDER." I thought she looked about 30 in that film.

Hume Cronyn, Alan Napier and DL icon Abe Vigoda.

Wallace Shawn

Barry Fitzgerald

I second Walter Brennan. He looked old even in his earliest films.

Vivian Vance was once young!

Ian McDiarmid

Michael Gambon

Wilfrid Brambell

The greatest actress in English language, Miss Geraldine Page. She was 28 in Hondo but looked like she was in her 40s (thanks to those nasolabial folds of hers).

Beulah Bondi. She played old ladies starting in the early 1930s, when she was in her early 40s, and won an Emmy in 1976 for playing a very old lady on "The Waltons." She played Jimmy Stewart's mother in four movies, including "It's a Wonderful Life."

Ernest Borgnine.

Going back to “Rhoda”, Julie Kavner has channeled a 50 year-old woman since she was 24.

Mary Wickes

Maggie Smith

Fay Bainter.

Fay Bainter was only four years younger than Beulah Bondi but played Bondi's daughter-in-law in "Make Way for Tomorrow," Leo McCarey's movie about an elderly couple, played by Bondi and Victor Moore, who fall on hard times and lose their home and are unwanted by their adult children. Bondi was only 48 when she played the elderly woman. Her final scene is heartbreaking.

Ellen Corby