It is a frequent observation at the school gates, the bowling alley or the local branch of Nando’s: the students are starting to look older than the teachers nowadays.
And EastEnders fans thought the same this week after seeing Albert Square’s newest school bully, Logan – played by the actor Liam Hatch, 27.
“Dad’s gone back to class,” one social media user posted last week. “Why is this 44-year-old man walking around in a school uniform and picking fights with the local kids?” asked another. “Almost certain that this schoolboy sold me my mortgage,” said a third.
The third comment took Hatch by surprise. “I was looking in the mirror, thinking ‘surely I can’t be looking 44 – that’s five years younger than my dad!’,” he said. “I’m also a personal trainer, and I had to ask one of my clients how old they thought I was – they said 23, 24.”
He did not envisage becoming “the most talked about bully of the week”. Before long he had gone viral, as the BBC soap’s viewers began to doubt if school uniforms were made in his size.
But Hatch took it in good humour, saying “the comments were very funny” and “my family were loving it”.
He added: “A few of my friends asked if I was OK. But I’m in the performance and fitness industries, I know you’re going to get critics. As long as the performance is showing you are that character, that’s what’s important to an actor. You’re not looking at the appearance but the emotion.”
And he is far from the first actor to play a teenager as an adult. Throughout film and television history, actors in their 20s and 30s – and sometimes even 40s – have often depicted teenagers. Notable examples include Stockard Channing, who was 33 when she played the 17-year-old Rizzo in Grease, and Barbra Streisand – who was 40 when she played a 28-year-old woman trying to pass as a 17-year-old boy.
Hatch is all too aware that Logan is only the latest peculiarly precocious teenager on screen. “For me, I used to love Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Saved by the Bell,” he said. “You had these actors in their 20s playing teenage kids. Definitely with American high school shows you see a lot of that. Even the Breakfast Club.”
He added: “You look back and you can tell they’ve shaved down a little bit to play that role. You look at them off set and they had a full beard. I’m fortunate in that sense, I don’t have to shave as much off my face.”
He said it was not difficult to prepare for the role of a schoolboy, as he could look back on his own awkward teenage years.
“You’ve been that age before, you understand how you’re going to go through that process,” he said. And it is not his first time, having performed in a number of musicals where he has had to play youngsters.
But he has never had to play much older, with Macbeth at the Piccadilly theatre in London being “the oldest character I’ve played”.
In one storyline, Logan and his gang of friends orchestrated and filmed an attack on the character of Denzel Danes after he stood up for his girlfriend, Amy. And Hatch said while playing young does “take me a little bit back” to when he was that age, he recognises “society was completely different” then.
He added: “So you try and modernise yourself in a way, with words, postures, your body language. Teenagers now have more suave when they walk and talk, when I was younger it’d be a lot of running.
“So you morph into a modern teenager, instead of the one you were when you were younger.”
And when finally asked if he himself believes he can still pass for 17, he laughed and said: “I’ve looked at myself in the mirror a few times and gone, ‘yeah, I can be 17!”
Adult actors who have played teenagers on screen
Stockard Channing was 33 when she played the 17-year-old Rizzo in Grease.
Judd Nelson was 25 when he played 16-year-old John Bender in The Breakfast Club.
Stacey Dash played 16-year-old Dionne Marie Davenport in Clueless when she was 28.
Barbra Streisand was 40 when she played a 28-year-old woman trying to pass as a 17-year-old boy in Yentl.
Alan Ruck played high-schooler Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off! aged 29.
Rachel McAdams was 25 when she played 17 year-old Regina George in Mean Girls.
Ben McKenzie was 25 when he played 16-year-old Ryan in the OC.
