You're How Old?

Occasionally, when flicking through channels people feel the need to revisit their childhood and watch their old favourite TV programmes. This happened to me recently. So instead of studying or writing essays I thought I'd sit back and watch "Jungle Run": a game show where 3 young 'explorers' make their way through jungle tasks, collecting monkey statues in a bid to get enough time for the final game to win prizes. To make things better it was a 'celebrity special' with the cast of "My Parents are Aliens" (another classic) as contestants. The actors: Keith Warwick, Isabella Melling and Jordan Maxwell, who played Terence 'Trent' Clements, Wendy Richardson and Frankie Perkins respectively, took part in the kids version of "The Crystal Maze" for charity. Although no longer being produced, "Jungle Run" is endlessly repeated on CITV and ran from 1999 - 2008 after a decrease in popularity.

Michael Underwood - presenter of "Jungle Run"

The main cast of "My Parents are Aliens"

While watching that episode of "Jungle Run" I noticed how little Keith Warwick had changed, so in another attempt to dodge uni work I looked him up on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to discover he was born in 1967! Now assuming my maths is correct that makes the Scottish actor 45 years old, meaning that he started playing teenager Trent when he was 32! How is that even possible? He looked about 14! 

In my shocked state I turned to facebook where a grand total of 10 people agreed with my assessment:

But it got me thinking and it seems there are quite a lot of adult actors pretending to be teenagers. For example:

• The cast of "Glee" are in general a lot older than their roles such as 29-year-old Cory Monteith who plays a teenager in high school.
• Again in the "Twilight" saga the majority of characters are quite a bit younger than the actors that play them. For example Robert Pattinson, who plays the lead male; Edward Cullen, is 8 years older than his character.
• Here is a further article listing some of the more dramatic age differences between actors and their respective characters.

Glasgow born Warwick has done much more since his 6 year stint on "My Parents are Aliens" and proclaims to be an actor, writer and composer. He has also been involved in projects such as "The Wicker Tree" (2010) and "The Creatures" (2008) which is a short film about the disturbing memories of a young girl.