While doing a bit of research on Spy Kids and Sleepover co-star Alexa Vega yesterday, I discovered that she played a five-year-old Helen Hunt in Twister (1996), as well as a young Swoozie Kurtz in the TV-movie A Promise to Carolyn (1996). This got me thinking about other child actors who played younger versions of movie stars before becoming stars in their own right.

Anybody got any other names they can come up with?

The ideal find would be someone who was pretty much unknown when they played the younger version of a movie star, but went on to become famous in their own right some years later. Examples of such would include:

Jennifer Connelly: Elizabeth McGovern, Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Corey Feldman: Kurt Russell, The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Seth Green: Woody Allen, Radio Days (1987)
Jena Malone: Jodie Foster, Contact (1997)
Alexa Vega: Helen Hunt, Twister (1996)

We could also keep track of child or teen actors who were already fairly well-known when they played younger versions of their adult co-stars:

Thora Birch: Melanie Griffith, Now and Then (1995)
Gaby Hoffman: Demi Moore, Now and Then (1995)
River Phoenix: Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Christina Ricci: Rosie O'Donnell, Now and Then (1995)

And then there are child actors who were actually the stars of the films themselves, but big-time movie stars played them as adults in cameos:

Joseph Mazzello: Jim Carrey, Simon Birch (1998)
Wil Wheaton: Richard Dreyfuss, Stand By Me (1986)

I'm not sure where I'd put these other examples I found:

Joseph Perrino: Jason Patric, Sleepers (1996)
Brad Renfro: Brad Pitt, Sleepers (1996)
Jonathan Taylor Thomas: Matthew Broderick, The Lion King (1994)
Jonathan Tucker: Billy Crudup, Sleepers (1996)

Two key things: First, I am only interested in CHILD actors or TEEN actors, i.e. actors who are not necessarily all that likely to have viable careers once they reach adulthood, so the fact that some of them DO go on to have viable careers is somewhat remarkable. Second, the child actors and the adult actors who play the same character must appear in the same movie together -- so no, there is no room here to put Jake Lloyd side-by-side with Hayden Christensen or David Prowse or Sebastian Shaw or even James Earl Jones, since Lloyd did not actually appear in the same film as any of those actors.

Note: I admit I am cheating a bit by including The Fox and the Hound, which is a cartoon (and thus is not a film in which ANY of the characters "appear" in any literal sense). And I also admit I may be cheating a bit by including Seth Green in Radio Days, since we never actually SEE Woody Allen in that film -- but we do hear Woody's voice narrating the film, and we know who Green is supposed to be.

Dakota Fanning: Reese Witherspoon: Sweet Home Alabama

(I'm ashamed to say I didn't have to look that up)

Mayim Bialik: Bette Midler Beaches
Marcie Leeds: Barbara Hershey Beaches

I don't recall Marcie Leeds doing anything after Beaches. Mayim Bialick achieved modest fame on Blossom (which I'm embarrassed to admit I used to watch), though I don't think she's done much since.

Kristin Dunst: Samantha Mathis Little Women (1994)

Gwyneth Paltrow: Maggie Smith - Hook

Here's a triple play for you... and I am using the same possible cheat as the Seth Green/Wood Allen example.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt of 10 Things I Hate About You, played the young Norman MaClean in A River Runs Through It, who is then played as a young man by Craig Sheffer, and narrated throughout as an old man by Robert Redford.

How old was Frank Whaley when he played the young Jack Nicholson in Ironweed?

Does LeeLee Sobieski playing a young Helen Hunt IN REAL LIFE count?

I just had a couple of free hours, so I tackled this at my pleasure on IMDB.

Please note, I did not follow all of your rules. I was just interested in who played the same character at different ages, regardless if he was a child, a teenager or an adult (vs teenager, adult, and elderly person). I also didn't care if it was in the same movie or in a sequel. I didn't care if it was released in the theaters, released on video, or played on television.

In no particular order...

Noah Taylor & Geoffrey Rush in Shine
Mario van Peebles and Melvin van Peebles in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Stephen Collins and William Holden in Billy Wilder's Fedora
Keith Coogan and Mickey Rooney in The Fox and the Hound
Peter Coyote and Melvyn Douglass in Tell Me a Riddle
Rachel McAdams and Gena Rowlands in The Notebook
Natasha McElhone and Vanessa Redgrave in Mrs. Dalloway
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Cloris Leachman in Double Double Toil and Trouble (TV)
Anna Paquin and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Jane Eyre
Rebecca Pidgeon and Peggy Ashcroft in She's Been Away
Kelly Preston and Diane Ladd in Mrs. Munck
Mary Steenburgen and Lillian Gish in The Whales of August
Kimberly Williams (According to Jim) and Sharon Stone in Simpatico
Michelle Williams and Natascha Henstridge in Species
Kate Winslet and Dame Judy Dench in Iris
Jeff Bridges and Lloyd Bridges in Silent Night, Lonely Night (TV)
Ryan Gosling and James Garner in The Notebook
Christina Applegate and Cheryll Ladd in Grace Kelly (TV)
Lacey Charbert (Mean Girls) w/Kirsten Dunst and Meg Ryan in Anastasia
Rachel Leigh Cook and Parker Posey in The House of Yes
Rachel Leigh Cook and Angelina Jolie in True Women (TV)
Claire Daines and Anne Bancroft in How to Make an American Quilt
Hillary Duff and Patricia Arquette in Michel Gondry's Human Nature
Jennifer Ehle and Rosemary Harris in "The Camomile Lawn" (mini)
Tracy Gold and Catherine Hicks as Marilyn:The Untold Story (TV)
Heather Graham and Jessica Lange in O Pioneers! (TV)
Carla Gugino and Wynona Ryder in Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
Keira Knightley and Emily Mortimer in Coming Home (TV)
Keira Knightley and Gabrielle Amwar in Innocent Lies
Carole Lombard and Glenn Close in Maxie
Ving Rhames and Paul WInfield in Go Tell It On the Mountain (TV)
Sam Rockwell and Darren McGavin in Happy Hell Night
Richard Schiff (West Wing) and Michael Constantine (MBFGW) in My Life
Henry Thomas and Anthony Perkins in Psycho IV:The Beginning, & Psycho
Jake Thomas (TV's Lizzie McGuire) and Vincent D'Onforio in The Cell
Frankie Whalley and Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams
Barry Williams (Greg Brady) and Christopher Jones in WIld In the Streets
Billy Zane and Terence Stamp in The Kiss
Colin Firth and Paul Scofield in 1919
Emile Hirsch and Jonathan Schaech in Houdini (TV)
Joshua Jackson and Keith Carradine in Payoff (TV)
Rob Lowe and Robert Wagner in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Charles Matthau and Walter Matthau in Hanging Up
Roddy McDowall and Gregory Peck in The Keys of the Kingdom
Roddy McDowall and Tyrone Power in Son of Fury
Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney in Big Fish
Frankie Muniz and Matthew Modine in What The Deaf Man Heard (TV)
Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando in The Godfather Trilogy

Enjoy!
Nick

Since DanBuck brought that up, I always thought that Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of Home Improvement fame) would make a great young Val Kilmer.




Can this thread branch out with fantasy combos, or should we start another? Because I've got a couple of ideas for good siblings matches too (Josh Lucas, Matthew McConaughey, and Cole Hauser would make a menacing trio).

Wasn't the young Forrest Gump (i.e. Tom Hanks) played by someone quite well known, or am I just imagining that?

Psst, SZPT: Could you rearrange your photos so we can get our margins back?

Correction: Haley Joel Osment played Forrest Gump's son, not Forrest Gump himself.

My favorite recent entry: Daniel Tay as Young Harvey Pekar

Rory Culkin played the younger version of Macaulay's character, Richie Rich, and also played the younger version of Kieran's character in Igby Goes Down.

D'oh! I just remembered, one of Alexa Vega's co-stars in Sleepover is Mika Boorem, who played the young Charlize Theron in Mighty Joe Young (1998) and the young Drew Barrymore in Riding in Cars with Boys (2001).

One of the things that intrigued me when I started this, BTW, was that Vega had played a young Helen Hunt, and Hunt herself started out as a child star -- but nothing in her IMDB filmography seems to imply that she ever played the younger version of another actor's character. Ditto the Jena Malone - Jodie Foster thing -- Foster herself started out as a child star, but at the moment I can't find any evidence that she played the younger version of another actor's character (no, Freaky Friday does not count -- the fact that the two characters switch bodies does NOT mean that one body is the younger version of the other body). For that matter, Barrymore was a child star too once, but she too does not seem to have played the younger versions of any adult characters.

William Tracy - Pat O'Brien (Angels with Dirty Faces)

From It's a Wonderful Life:

Ronnie Ralph - Frank Albertson (Sam Wainwright)
Georgie Nokes - Todd Karns (Harry Bailey)

Did any of those kids go on to have careers? The ideal candidate for the list I'm imagining here is someone who managed to parlay the child- or teen-actor thing into a viable adult career -- and someone who, in their child- or teen-actor days, happened to play the younger version of an existing adult star. Someone who had just one or two roles while young, then vanished, doesn't quite qualify.

Roddy McDowall has no fewer than four such film appearances to his credit:

Young Bob Slater (with Emlyn Williams) in You Will Remember
John Ashwood II, age 16 (with Peter Lawford) in The White Cliffs of Dover

in addition to the two previously mentioned by Nick:

Young Benjamin Blake (with Tyrone Power) in Son of Fury
Young Francis Chisholm (with Gregory Peck) in The Keys of the Kingdom

I would nominate Jodie Foster as the most successful former child star (2 Oscars as an adult actor), with Mr. McDowall running a distant second (no Oscars, but a pretty respectable career). However, Ms. Foster's filmography doesn't seem to contain any instances of playing anyone's younger self.

Did anyone mention Jean Simmons playing the young Valerie Hobson or the young Anthony Valentine (I'll have to double-check that) playing the young John Mills in David Lean's Great Expectations (1948)?

Actually, I see it was Anthony Wager as the young Pip. And the year was 1948.

Wil Wheaton as the young Richard Dreyfuss in Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986) just came to mind.

Here's another:

It's hard to believe now, but Elizabeth Taylor is another former child star with two Oscars for her adult work. Like Roddy McDowall, Taylor also appeared in The White Cliffs of Dover, albeit uncredited, playing the younger version of Betsy, the older version of whom was played by June Lockhart (also uncredited).

Beat that!

Hi all, I got some

Elijah Wood/Tom Hanks-Radio Flyer 1992
Elijah Wood/Tom Wood-Avalon 1990
David Moscow/Tom Hanks-Big 1998

In honour of Racing Stripes, which premieres this weekend, I note that young star Hayden Panettiere played a young Hilary Swank in The Affair of the Necklace.

Too early to say if he'll have much of a grown-up career, but Michael Angarano, the star of Sky High, played a young Tobey Maguire in Seabiscuit and a young Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous.

Here's another one:

Mila Kunis was born in Ukraine in 1983, and in 1998 she played an 11-year-old version of Angelina Jolie in Gia. Today, she is known as the star of TV's That 70's Show and a voice actor on The Family Guy, and this Friday she will be seen on the the big screen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

And to follow up my previous post, Michael Angarano will also be seen again on the big screen this Friday, co-starring with Jackie Chan and Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingdom.