How Old The Twilight Cast Was Compared To Their Characters

The cast members of the Twilight Saga weren’t all the same age as their characters, although this is understandable given many of them played ageless vampires. The Twilight Saga was a phenomenally successful series of fantasy romance movies based on the novels of the same name. Twilight follows Bella Swan, a 17-year-old human girl who moves to the town of Forks and falls in love with her mysterious classmate, Edward Cullen. When Bella discovered Edward was a vampire, she was introduced to a world of vampires, werewolves, and centuries-old battles between them.

Watch on Hulu

While the Twilight Saga’s financial success was impressive, the movies didn’t fare too well with critics. Some of the vitriol aimed at the Twilight movies was arguably the result of their popularity among a primarily teenage fan base, but there were also some legitimate criticisms. Like the source novels, the Twilight Saga’s adaptations were pretty low on self-aware humor and meaningful tension. The story often focused on the relationship between Bella and her love interests instead of the battle between werewolves and vampire factions. Furthermore, not all Twilight’s cast were the right age for their characters.

Related

Twilight Saga: Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The Twilight Saga wasn’t consistent in quality, but there’s one movie that stands as the best of all. Here’s how every Twilight movie ranks.

9 Kristen Stewart: 17 Years Old

Bella Swan: 17 Years Old

When Kristen Stewart was cast in the star-making role of Twilight’s teenage heroine Bella Swan, she was the same age as her character. Author Stephenie Meyer wanted Emily Browning for the role, but the Australian actor was considered too old to play the part.

A canceled Paramount adaptation of Twilight stalled the movie’s production by two years as the rights changed hands, which left Stewart perfectly positioned to take on the role of Bella. Stewart had already impressed in director David Fincher’s Panic Room a few years earlier, and although critics weren’t kind to her work in the Twilight movies, she went on to become an acclaimed actor.

8 Robert Pattinson: 21 Years Old

Edward Cullen: 104 Years Old

Robert Pattinson was 21 years old when he gained the role of Edward Cullen. Edward is 104 years old when the story of the Twilight Saga begins. Meyer’s first choices for Edward, Charlie Hunman and Henry Cavill, were both too old to play the part by the time production began.

While Pattinson was also a few years too old to play a high school student, the actor’s youthful appearance made this more believable. While Edward is technically 104 years old, he was turned into a vampire at 17. As such, he should technically look like a seventeen-year-old throughout the Twilight saga.

7 Taylor Lautner 15 Years Old

Jacob Black: 15 Years Old

Taylor Lautner was a child actor best known for Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D when he gained the role of Jacob Black at fifteen years old. After Black played a minor part in the original Twilight, producers wanted to replace Lautner with an older actor for the sequels. However, Lautner famously gained a lot of muscle to hold onto the part and played Jacob in every Twilight sequel as a result.

While New Moon was the weakest Twilight movie, Lautner’s physical transformation bought the sequel a huge amount of publicity as fans of the series sparked the infamous “Team Edward/Team Jacob” debate.

Related

How Twilight Foreshadowed 2 Crucial New Moon Scenes

Twilight subtly foreshadowed two key moments in New Moon, which ended up being linked and impacting Bella and Edward’s relationship.

6 Ashley Greene: 20 Years Old

Alice Cullen: 104 Years Old

Ashley Greene was twenty years old when she took on the role of Alice Cullen in Twilight. Like Edward, Alice is canonically 104 years old in the Twilight novels. While the twenty-year-old could just about pass as a high school student in the early Twilight movies, this admittedly grew less believable as the series progressed.

However, the same issue arose with Pattinson’s Edward, who, despite ostensibly never aging, looked a lot older in 2012’s Breaking Dawn Part 2 than he did in 2008’s Twilight. The movies got around this issue by limiting the number of scenes set in high school after the original movie.

5 Nikki Reed: 19 Years Old

Rosalie Hale: 90 Years Old

Nikki Reed was only fourteen when she worked with director Catherine Hardwicke on the actor’s breakout movie Thirteen. As such, Hardwicke’s vision for Twilight inevitably included a supporting role for Reed as Edward’s adoptive sister, Rosalie Hale.

While Reed was younger than both Pattinson and Greene while filming the first Twilight movie, Rosalie arguably looks a little older than her siblings. Fortunately, the Twilight movies were able to excuse this discrepancy. Rosalie’s tragic Twilight backstory meant she was a little more mature than the rest of the Cullen clan by the time she was turned by Carlisle.

4 Jackson Rathbone: 23 Years Old

Jasper Hale: 161 Years Old

While it is not unusual for teen movies to cast older actors as children, the Twilight movies generally steered clear of this approach. Unlike Riverdale or 13 Reasons Why, the Twilight Saga didn’t cast any actors in their mid-twenties as high school students. That said, Jackson Rathbone’s Jasper Hale was almost the exception to this rule.

While Jasper is canonically 161 years old, he was turned into a vampire at the age of 19. Despite this, Rathbone was 23 years old when filming the original Twilight. Since his co-star Robert Pattinson was only two years younger, this isn’t too noticeable, but the actor does look too old to be attending Algebra class.

Related

Twilight Remake Cast: We Recast Every Main Character For The TV Show Reboot

Twilight is getting a TV show over a decade after its final movie in the franchise premiered. Here’s who should take on the character roles.

3 Elizabeth Reaser: 32 Years Old

Esme Cullen: 110 Years Old

While Rathbone was a little old to be playing a high-schooler, Elizabeth Reaser had the opposite problem. At 32 years old, the actor appeared way too young to play the mother of the Cullen “children.” It’s a good thing that the cover story for the Cullen vampires is that Esme and Carlisle adopted all of their children during their travels. Fortunately, the wealth of the Cullen family meant that their cover story was rarely questioned in Forks, provided they kept to themselves.

2 Kellan Lutz: 22 Years Old

Emmett Cullen: 90 Years Old

Kellan Lutz might have been younger than his Twilight co-star Jackson Rathbone, but the actor was arguably the least believable high school student in the Cullen family. Thanks to his imposing frame, Lutz looked every bit like his twenty-two years when filming Twilight. The actor couldn’t really pass for a nineteen-year-old in Twilight, let alone in the movie’s sequels, and this made it tough to work out just how the family had evaded suspicion so far.

However, Emmet’s relatively minor role in the story helped. It also helped that most of the students saw the Cullen teens as model-like. Though they might not have participated in team sports while attending high school in Forks, the other students likely saw Emmet as something of the jock archetype compared to his siblings, which would explain his stature.

1 Peter Facinelli: 34 Years Old

Carlisle Cullen: 365 Years Old

Like Elizabeth Reaser, Peter Facinelli was technically much too young to play the father of the Cullen family. However, since Carlisle’s Twilight backstory explained that he was 365 years old by the time the story of the saga began, he got a pass. Carlisle spent his centuries as a compassionate healer and learning everything he could about medicine as it changed, always solidifying his place in a new town as a friendly doctor.

Carlisle managed to survive as a vampire successfully for centuries across various continents. As such, it does make sense that he would be able to keep a low profile in the town of Forks until Twilight’s infamous love story dragged his found family into an eons-old feud.