Carol Kane was already in her late twenties when she made this. She's supposed to be the teenage babysitter, but it always feels like she's forcing the "young" thing with her acting. (Yeesh, she'd already played grown women onscreen for several years already.) Not that she isn't a good actress--just that they needed an actual teenager, or someone who could actually pass as one, for this part.
shareI agree, but I think they made the best of what they had to work with, which was her. Using two actresses when they're not that far apart in age (unlike a young child/adult character played by two actors) would have been tough to believe.
share[deleted]
She looked a bit younger than her age to me. I've seen people even older than her play teenagers in films (Danielle Harris comes to mind, she was 30 in Rob Zombie's Halloween), so it's not anything unheard of. She had an innocent demeanor about her that made me feel sorry for her when all of the bad things started happening so I think she was perfectly cast.
I've been waiting for you, Ben.
I thought she pulled it off as a teenager. It was very common then to use adults as teenagers. Sissy Specek was 28 in Carrie. Stockard Channing was 33 in Grease.
<b><i>Well, Hip-Hop-Hooray for your cheap climax!</b></i>
Stockard Channing was 33 in Grease.
And she looked every bit of it. In fact, she could have passed for 40. Even back then I remember laughing with my friends that she was supposed to be a high school student.
Was she supposed to be a teenager? Given the size of her textbooks and the way Carol Kane looked back then, I honestly assumed she was meant to be college aged.
shareI was more concerned that she sounded throughout like she had a peg on her nose.
shareYeah, I had the impression she was in college, likely her first year, which would make her 18-19.
Plus the part required an actress who could pull off being a young married woman with two kids in the last act.
Well, true but her aged worked for the rest of the movie, since it continues on into her adult life after she's married.
Always be yourself Because an original is worth more than a copy.
I assumed she was in college in the beginning
she was supposed to be college aged. she wasn't "late 20s" when making this film, by the way. based on her birthdate and the time this was released, she would have been 26 at the time of filming and 27 when it was released. not a teen, but 26 isn't all that far off from her character's intended age.
"It's alligator, darlin'...al-li-gator"
She worked for ME, people looked older back in those days for their age so I could kinda buy it.
share