Smallest age difference in a parent/child pairing in a movie?

"Hamlet" - Mel Gibson (b. 1956) / Glenn Close (b. 1947)

great example brought up in a thread about the most disturbing movies recently: Clifford -- Charles Grodin (born 1935) and Martin Short (born 1950). adults playing children to intended comedic effect being another big caveat.

The Grifters - Angelica Houston (1951) & John Cusack (1966)

North by Northwest--Jesse Royce Landis(1896) & Cary Grant (1904)=8 years. Deserves mention because Landis is portrayed as a feisty old lady and Grant is her swingin' bachelor son.

Estelle Getty (July 25, 1923) / Beatrice Arthur (May 13, 1922)

Jessie Royce Landis played Cary Grant's mom in 2 Hitchcock films -- they were born the same year.

XPOST!

The Grifters is intentional, because it was a teen pregnancy.

In Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell (b. 1967)'s parents are Gary Cole (b. 1956) and Jane Lynch (b. 1960). I think they use hair dye and makeup to age Lynch a bit but didn't really make any kind of effort w/ Cole.

Golden Girls is definitely the best revelation on this thread so far!

Golden Girls is NOT A MOVIE and barely TV. Also, Jonathan Winters (1925) played Robin Williams' (1952) son in Mork & mindy.

xp

ah, obv Jessie Royce Landis used to lie about her age.

sean connery, harrison ford?

Mean Girls: Amy Poehler (b. 1971) and Rachel McAdams (b. 1976)

it's my thread and I say TV is fair game!

you would.

The World According to Garp: Robin Williams (b. 1952) / Glenn Close (b. 1947)

Another Hitchcock: Marnie--Louise Latham ('22) & Tippi Hedren ('30)= 8 years

This is not the smallest gap, but in fact a large gap, but in the wrong direction! Crispin Glover, b. 1964, is the son of Angelina Jolie, b. 1975, in that Beowulf movie (but does this count? I know nothing of the film or, for that matter, the book, as I am a rube)

also, diane lane is robin williams mom in Jack, and she's 14y younger. These are such cheats, i know

Walk The Line: Robert Patrick (b. 1958) and Joaquin Phoenix (b. 1974)

christ, Morbius, this isn't a definitive list and I think invariably TV examples will be rarer but in those instances interesting enough to mention, might as well throw it into discussion. start a TV thread equivalent if it really bothers you that much.

i think he was just making joeks, bruv

Bringing up Crispin Glover (b. '64) reminds me of Back To The Future w/ Michael J. Fox (b. '61), but again, that's another movie full of timewarps and other cheats.

I think it was a joke about his actual contempt for me, but yeah, I should've taken it in stride.

sally field and tom hanks in gump?

marty mcfly/george mcfly ftw ah xpost

Field/Hanks=10 years

Seems to be an urban myth that in Steptoe & Son the actors were around the same age, with the bloke playing the son actually older than the father, but IMDB says not so:

Wilfrid Brambell 22 March 1912 (dad)
Harry H Corbett 28 February 1925 (son)

Still, 13 years fairly small.

chill, I can barely tell all the Alexes apart.

sean connery, harrison ford?

-- darraghmac, Friday, November 9, 2007 12:24 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Finally got around to looking this up, only 12 years ('30 and '42)! Somehow I thought it'd be more.

(xpost hey i put the effort into telling the "Dr" posters apart, but i guess that's not as hard)

Went looking for age gaps in The Royal Tenenbaums on a hunch, smallest one is Anjelica Huston (b. 1951) and Ben Stiller (b. 1965).

Shawn Wayans (b. 1970) played the son of Lahmard J. Tate (b. 1971) in Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, a chilling story of life in 1930's Krakow.

lol. i almost brought up Little Man earlier but then I remembered that Marlon's just supposed to be a midget posing as Shawn's son.

Frasier: John Mahoney (b. 1940) and Kelsey Grammer (b. 1955).

Manchurian Candidate, people!

Angela Lansbury b. 1925
Lawrence Harvey b. 1927

Honestly, I thought this was pretty famous stuff.

Golden Girls is NOT A MOVIE and barely TV.

Unforgivable

the frasier thing isn't THAT big a diff.

and ya manchurian IS the most famous example as far as i knew

i'm surprised morbius doesn't like golden girls! i guess he just doesn't have time for those rowdy youngsters

i was gonna say golden girls before i even opened this thread!

If I remember correctly, in the film Blow Rachel Griffiths plays Johnny Depp's mother despite being younger than him in real life.

And I do remember correctly because I have now checked this on imdb -

Johnny Depp 09/06/1963
Rachel Griffiths 18/12/1968

i'm surprised morbius doesn't like golden girls! i guess he just doesn't have time for those rowdy youngsters

-- s1ocki, Monday, March 31, 2008 5:07 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

nearly made me choke on my water there

<3 slocki and morbius

sally field and tom hanks in gump?

Which is really weird since they both had previously starred together as people of equal age not too long before Gump.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JWYFPA15L._AA240_.jpg

wow I remember watching that as a kid.

it's awful.

ironically his first "serious" movie role!!

On the whole, this issue is very gendered, isn't it? Women play Old much earlier than men, so a 40-year-old woman plays the mother of a 35-year-old actor - etc - but it would rarely happen the other way round: that seems to be the pattern the thread shows.

I realize that Hollywood gender inequality is not news, but think this aspect of the thread deserves pointing out, if I'm right about it.

ironically his first "serious" movie role!!

I think you're forgetting an earlier film he made with another cast member of "Smokey & The Bandit"

http://www.clown-ministry.com/images/nothing-in-common-tom-hanks-jackie-gleason.jpg

I don't get some of these! E.g., the 15-year Mahoney/Grammer difference is not exactly that far off from the character timelines -- maybe 7 to 10 years -- and they both sort visually into broad age divisions where that distance isn't making a huge difference. You could meet those two in reality and probably not think much beyond "wow, his dad looks very young and healthy," which I think plenty of people would say about Mahoney anyway.

Also Sally Field mostly played mother to a child-Gump, and was artificially aged to play mother to an adult Hanks-Gump: this couldn't possibly count!

Oh, you pick that out but not the Crispin Glover one?

What about like Michael J. Fox playing Seamus McFly?

in 'Kath and Kim' Kath (Jane Turner, June 61) is a month younger than on-screen daughter Kim (Gina Riley, May 61)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iiOfxlchL._SS500_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51W0M7SE0CL._SS500_.jpg
actually this one is a wild guess. I never saw the movie. I never saw Clifford either actually.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5182MAJKBDL._SS500_.jpg
does this count?

well it turns out I'm wrong with Clifford (15 years difference). Baxter I have no clue. The Jerk probably doesn't count. Oh well.

in 'Kath and Kim' Kath (Jane Turner, June 61) is a month younger than on-screen daughter Kim (Gina Riley, May 61)

― Fred Nerk, Monday, March 31, 2008 7:10 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

U.S. version too:

Molly Shannon was cast as Kath,[11] and Selma Blair as Kim.[12] Even though they are playing mother and daughter, Shannon is actually only eight years older than Blair: Shannon was born in 1964, Blair in 1972. Similarly, in the Australian version, Jane Turner (Kath) is only five months older than Gina Riley (Kim).

Can't be bothered googling ages, but Catherine Tate seems a little too young to be have been playing James McAvoy's mother in Starter for Ten.

Golden Girls is NOT A MOVIE and barely TV.

*grumbles*

Also, Jonathan Winters (1925) played Robin Williams' (1952) son in Mork & mindy.

That's different--people age backwards on Ork.

right now watching a Two And A Half Men rerun where Annie Potts (b. October 1952) plays the mother of Marin Hinkle (b. March 1966).

Zachary Quinto (b. 1977) and Winona Ryder (b. 1971), playing his mother, in Star Trek.

Horse Feathers-Groucho Marx (10/1890) plays father to Zeppo Marx (2/1901)

Earthquake. Ava Gardner was only seven years younger than Lorne Greene, who plays her father. Greene was born in 1915, Gardner in 1922.

Looking back over the thread, noticed The Grifters talk, and remembered a contender that never was. Melanie Griffith (b. 10/57) dropped out of the film (due to pregnancy) so she didn't get to play John Cusack (b. 6/66)'s mom.

Zachary Quinto (b. 1977) and Winona Ryder (b. 1971), playing his mother, in Star Trek.

Maybe Vulcans just age slower than humans?

I don't think any space alien characters should count here, unless the alien species is explicitly stated to have an identical aging process to humans.

Vulcans are longer-lived than humans, make of that what you will.

considering that there's not any kind of ironclad list or canon of what 'counts' here and it's just a fun bullshit thread, i think people should just post whatever examples they want

Krysten Ritter's Don't Trust The B character's father is played by an actor who is 9 years her senior.

"Suburgatory" - Jeremy Sisto (b. 1974) / Jane Levy (b. 1989)

"1600 Penn" - Jenna Elfman (b. 1971) / Martha MacIsaac (b. 1984)

that's a pretty typical difference in many british suburgs

i'm surprised morbius doesn't like golden girls! i guess he just doesn't have time for those rowdy youngsters

― s1ocki, Monday, March 31, 2008 1:07 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

lmao

I wonder about some examples of the greatest age difference in parent/child pairing in a movie.

Was just watching I'll Cry Instead (1955), a biopic of 1920s/30s singer Lillian Roth, in which 39-year-old Jo Van Fleet is playing the mother of 38-year-old Susan Hayward.

One of those situations where the age difference on screen seemed dubious, so I consulted imdb and it was even more absurd than I expected.

I’ll Cry Tomorrow that is

Chitty chitty bang bang..

Dick van dyke (1925) son
Lionel Jeffries (1926) father

Diff = -1

Notable as 'grandpa' was supposed to be much older than son.

For Forrest Gump (and a number of others in this thread), Forrest appears as both a child and adult played by different actors, and his mother is an adult throughout the movie.

They could have cast an actress age-appropriate to Tom Hanks, then somehow de-age her with the child actor, but it's probably easier to cast a younger actress and age her up.

How about May-December romances? Famously, Dustin Hoffman being only 6 years younger than Anne Bancroft in "The Graduate."

Is there a particular reason why in some movies the aging make-up looks pretty convincing and in others it looks terrible? There doesn't seem to necessarily be much correlation between how expensive/prestigious the film is and how good the make-up looks, maybe some actors just happen to have a better face for this sort of thing?

Just saw the end of a Star Trek (original series) episode which featured Spock's parents. Mark Lenard, who played Spock's father, was 7 years older than Leonard Nimoy.

It would not surprise me if, at some point, Wilford Brimley had played the father of an actor exactly his age. The dude was born looking 50.

Lee J. Cobb plays Gary Cooper's uncle in "Man of the West," despite being 10 years younger than Cooper (who himself was imo way too old for the part). They used make-up to try and make Cobb look older.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNWFmMzM3ZmUtY2IwNS00ZTdmLTk5MDMtZDY4Y2UyN2I1Y2M5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUwMDUwNA@@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

The Day the Earth Stood Still:

Patricia Neal, who played Helen Benson, was only 12 years older than Billy Gray, who played her son.

rebecca ferguson is 12 years older than timotheeee chalamet in the recent dune

alan ruck is only ten years younger than brian cox (succession)

The Northman: Nicole Kidman (6/20/67) as mother to Alexander Skarsgård (8/25/76)

I found one today that will be hard to beat. Was watching The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on the big screen and I found it odd that John Wayne kept treating this one character as if he were underage, telling him he’s too young to vote etc. I was thinking that the guy looked about 50, despite his long floppy hair. Turns out that the actor, O.Z. Whitehead, was 50, and what’s worse is the actor playing his father in the film is Denver Pyle, who was nine years younger. -9, top that.

denver pyle was only two years older than doris duke, who played his daughter on the doris duke show. that guy was just old looking

lol I should have known this thread would already have covered The Golden Girls

In Splitting Heirs, Barbara Hershey (b. 1948) plays the birth mother of Eric Idle (b. 1943) and the adoptive parent of Rick Moranis (b. 1953). In the movie, both Idle and Moranis' characters were born in the mid 1960s so a 50 year old Idle is playing someone in their late 20s or so.

In Tokyo Story, Chishu Ryu was only 5 and 6 years older than two of his "children" -- he was only 49 when it was released.