When Looking Like a Teen Is Part of the Job
When I, a 32-year-old woman, hear about Gen-Zers seeking “preventative” Botox and 10-year-olds TikToking their skincare routines, I can’t help but feel slightly panicked. I’ve been known to lose an hour scrolling eye cream reviews on MakeupAlley or uploading marginally different photos of my face to an app called “How old do I look?” (Turns out I can alter my age by a decade if I frown or tilt my head to the left.)
Still, when I fall down a rabbit hole about my own physical flaws, I remind myself that I’m a writer. I spend most of the day behind a screen — a few lines around my eyes won’t hurt my career or materially change my life.
But what if it did? Sephora Kids and AgeBot apps are the latest offshoot of a culture that pressures us to stay young before we’ve even grown up. Writers might not have to worry about their looks affecting their income, but that’s not necessarily the case for people whose jobs hinge on how they appear onstage or on screen.
When I learned that the high schooler whose performance I had admired in a West End musical was in fact 28, I wondered how he handled the pressure to maintain the same look season after season. Actors in long-running productions sometimes inhabit the same role for years, getting older as their character remains frozen in time.
So I reached out to several actors in their late twenties and thirties who play children or teenagers on Broadway or the West End—professionals who are on the frontlines of contemporary anti-aging regimens.
35-year-old Book of Mormon star Kim Exum, who has been playing 19-year-old Nabulungi for almost a decade, confirmed that the stakes are high. “I do have this fear that one day, I’ll wake up and I just won’t look so young anymore,” she says. “Then what happens?” The role has been a constant as she has gone through major life transitions, like becoming a mother. “It feels like a blessing because it gives me stability, but artistically it’s challenging, because you’re always changing and growing as a person.”
Her co-star Cody Jamison Strand, another baby-faced 35-year-old, has been playing 19-year-old Elder Cunningham since he was 23. “I would do it as long as they would have me,” he says. “I’m fully aware that this is as good as it gets.” After returning from the pandemic to find that an actual 19-year-old, Noah Marlowe, had been cast as his standby, Strand began paying extra attention to his beauty regime. He experiments with new products from a monthly subscription box, Next Gay Thing, and currently favors the Vivifying Serum from Flânerie and the Midnight Recovery Botanical Cleansing Oil from Kiehl’s. Last year, he began incorporating Botox into his routine—he gets injections in his forehead and under his eyes a few times a year, though he’s careful not to overdo it. “As an actor, I have to use my face.”
It's a delicate balance to strike—and a frustrating one for aging actors who find that, even as they gain experience, their opportunities simultaneously diminish. Research from 2019 found that, of the hundred top-grossing films, just 14 percent of female characters and 21 percent of male characters were in their 50s or older. The roles that are offered to middle-aged actors tend to be for characters who are “grumpy, frumpy, or senile,” writes actor Lisa Moore. “As a female actor in my mid 50s I’ve never felt more invisible.”
Exum doesn’t have to worry for a while: Her skin is so smooth that she barely wears foundation, even onstage. Still, her beauty routine is meticulous. She removes every trace of makeup at night by double-cleansing, starting with Sunday Riley’s Ceramic Slip and finishing with CeraVe. She then applies either Paula’s Choice retinol or The Ordinary’s glycolic acid, and goes to bed with Laneige Sleeping Mask on her lips and Tatcha’s Dewy Skin Cream on her face. In addition to skincare, she’s also “passionate about toothcare,” warning that “teeth can also make you look old.” To that end, Exum schedules regular dental cleanings, flosses diligently, and brushes three times a day.
Twenty-eight-year-old Emma Louise Jones, on the other hand, relies on good genes and her relatively short stature. The five-foot-four British actress, who plays Moaning Myrtle and Rose Granger-Weasley in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, just does “the basics.” “My mum is in her 60s, and she does not look 60 at all,” Jones says. “I definitely think I’ve got it from my mum.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all skincare routine, but everyone I spoke to agreed on the importance of hydration. Strand had already drained his first quart-sized water bottle of the day when we zoomed at 10 a.m. 28-year-old Emma Pittman, who plays 17-year-old prom queen Cherry in a new Broadway production of The Outsiders (whose mostly-adult cast the New York Times called “credibly fresh-faced”), drinks “lots and lots of water,” of both the ordinary and coconut varieties. Exum says she has “to hydrate constantly,” and carries around a 64-ounce thermos to keep herself on track.
They all take rest seriously, too. “I love sleeping,” says Pittman, who aims for nine hours a night. “I can tell an enormous difference when I have even eight hours versus nine.” For Jones, who recently upgraded to a Dore & Rose silk pillowcase (which pulls less moisture from the skin than materials like cotton and linen), “the main goal” is to “get as much sleep as possible.” Strand relies on afternoon naps to power him through his nightly two-and-a-half-hour show. “I sleep like a baby,” he says, even though he indulges in several cups of coffee a day. “It’s my hidden superpower.”
Sun protection was another theme. Strand says his lifelong preference for video games over kickball is finally paying off. “Avoiding the sun just comes naturally,” he says, adding that staying inside “does wonders for pale-skinned individuals like myself.” As a pale-skinned individual for whom avoiding the sun does not come naturally, this worried me—until Pittman, who is also pale, told me that she is “feral to be out in the sun” (with SPF 35 on, of course). And Exum and Jones both love going to the beach. “I think as long as you have sunscreen on and you reapply it, you’re good,”Jones says.
Of course, convincing an audience you’re younger than you are isn’t just about looks — it’s also about energy and vibes. “It’s always useful to see the world from a child’s point of view,” says Thea Bunting, 26, who plays a school-child (among other roles) in Matilda the Musical, and draws inspiration from the actual kids in the cast. Listening to Miley Cyrus’s album Bangerz, which was popular when Pittman was in high school, helps her connect with her seventeen-year-old self.
Exacerbated by the front-facing nature of their jobs, all the actors I spoke to are up against an acute version of the ageism that permeates many workplaces: Older employees are stereotyped as less motivated, less flexible and less productive. These stereotypes are inaccurate, but as long as the appearance of youth confers social and economic benefits, the professionals have something to teach us.
So what have I learned? I did order a larger water bottle, but I’m going to keep enjoying the sun. Luckily, I don’t have a 19-year-old doppelganger waiting in the wings.
