MovieChat Forums > Matchstick Men (2003) Discussion > Don't take a 23 years old actress for a ...

Don't take a 23 years old actress for a 14yo character


No, the backwards baseball cap doesn't shave 10 years off your face.

reply

But the character wasn't supposed to be 14 years old. She was in her early 20's.

reply

It was clear she was supposed to be 14 .. as he had not spoken to his ex-wife in 14 years.

reply

SPOILER

--

Did you even watch the entire thing? Though never explicitly explained, I think it's safe to say she wasn't actually 14. She played a character around her actual age that played a 14 year old.

So the fact that she was many years older in reality was actually crucial to the plot.

---
Oh, kick-€$@&%!-ass! I got a MasterCard!

reply

she convinced me. I felt wrong for finding her rather cute, so was quite happy that she turned out to be 22.

reply

It doesn't matter what age her character is supposed to be. She's a grifter passing off for a 14yo. How would you react if somebody who looks 23yo came to you and said "Hi, I'm your <b>14yo</b> daughter"?

reply

It mattered a hell of a lot, because the way you put it, you seemed oblivious to the fact that it was a 23 year old playing someone around 20 who pretended to be significantly younger than that.

And it's a movie. I know that's a tired excuse, but seriously, it's not a big deal. Cage's character fell for it, and in the context of the movie, that's all that's of any importance here. But even realistically, I'm sure SOMEONE out there, at some point in the long history of man, has mistaken a 20 year old for a 14 year old. We're all vastly different. Hell, the poster above you says he was fooled.

On a seperate note, this woman looks younger than she is today.

---
I hear his theme music, he's around here somewhere...

reply

I typically agree with the "don't let a woman play a teenager" but seriously OP did you watch the movie?

1) She was supposed to be exactly what the actress is: a young looking 20-something. She was not supposed to be a teenager :)
2) When Lohman first came into casting rooms in character, the people there all thought she was a child so no Lohman in character did NOT look like a 23-year old to most people.

Now if her looking old ruined the movie for you and you predicted the plot after 20 minutes then too bad.

reply

She was very convincing actually.. and the cap did seem to shave off 10 years, I bought the whole '14 year old girl thing' tbh..

reply

I could buy her as teen in a sec. I don't think she looked like she was in her 20s at all. After they made her slutty in the end, yeah she looked to be in her 20s then. But dressed as a kid, she looked the part.

reply

It's like she's seductively role-playing "daddy's girl", which I guess kind of works since she's a phony, and Cage's character is a little boy

reply

she convinced me as while a girl of 14 years. taking into consideration the revelations in the end I suppose the girl was not to be a teenager, but to be convincing while a while that she was.

reply

I thought it was a fine piece of casting and make up. She always looked 14 to me and behaved like a 14 year old. What was revealing both to the audience and Roy, in the final scene in the carpet shop (a year later) was that she clearly does look more mature (but not 22).

reply

I totally bought it! Wasnt familiar with the actress and actually had to look up the fact that she would have been 23 or 24 when she made this movie.
At least I don't feel so dirty now thinking she was super cute.

reply

I thought she was perfectly cast. And she did a great job playing a twenty-something year old con artist pretending to be a fourteen year old.


reply

I was just about to write the same thing in response to the OP. I thought her body language and speech rhythms were very carefully observed; an excellent performance IMO. What I thought was interesting was how she would pass as a sister of the Sam Rockwell character - they did look as though they were related.

reply

But the character WASN'T 14 years old. She was a twenty-something year old pretending to be 14.

reply