Disney Channel stars know well that, as the saying goes, age is only a number.
While many of these actors are within a couple years of the characters they play, that's
not a hard and fast rule.
Some Disney stars, like the following ones, are in fact older than you think they are.
Raven-Symoné played the title character on That's So Raven, but she was a little bit
older than her fictional counterpart.
She was previously best known for her work on The Cosby Show, and she was a teenager
when That's So Raven premiered in 2003, placing her at high school age just like Raven Baxter.
But by the time the show wrapped in 2007, she was in her twenties and thus definitely
older than the young psychic she was playing.
It doesn't seem like that long ago when That's So Raven first aired, but it's been gone long
enough that it's already seen a revival.
In 2017, Symoné and costar Anneliese van der Pol reprised their roles on the spinoff
series Raven's Home.
Symoné still looked like she was in her twenties when she portrayed a young mom on the show,
but, in reality, she turned 32 in 2017.
"It's like my, my secret mommy power."
Lizzie McGuire was a tween favorite back in the early 2000s.
It aired two seasons from 2001 to 2004 on the Disney Channel and was followed by a movie
in which Lizzie and her friends go to Rome the summer before they start high school.
Believe it or not, Adam Lamberg, who played Lizzie's best friend-turned-love interest
David "Gordo" Gordon, was born in 1984, making him 17 during the show's first season.
Somehow, he still managed to convince audiences that he was a middle school student even though
he was already in his late teens when it debuted, and therefore quite a bit older than his character.
By the time The Lizzie McGuire Movie came out, Gordo was going off to high school but
Lamberg himself was getting ready for college.
He graduated from UC Berkeley just a few years after the show wrapped, earning a bachelor's
degree in geography in 2008.
Disney Channel's Sonny With a Chance was centered on the characters on a teen sketch show.
One of those teens was Tawni Hart, played by Tiffany Thornton, who was quite a bit older
than her comedic counterpart, as she turned 23 in 2009, the year the show debuted.
That same year, she starred in the high school-set Disney Channel Original Movie Hatching Pete.
Even though she was playing a teen, Thornton was living the life of a typical twentysomething.
The year after Sonny With a Chance debuted, she announced her engagement to her boyfriend,
Christopher Carney.
They got married in 2011, with Thornton's Sonny co-star Demi Lovato serving as a bridesmaid.
After getting hitched, Thornton continued to play Tawni on the Sonny spin-off, So Random!,
which aired for one season starting in 2011.
The last episode aired in March 2012, a month after Thornton announced that she was pregnant
with her first child.
Considering its title, one might expect that all the stars of High School Musical were
high school-aged.
While that holds true for many of the actors in the trilogy, a few were quite a bit older
than their on-screen counterparts.
For example, Lucas Grabeel, who played the snarky and ultra-talented Ryan Evans, was
born in November 1984, making him 21 when the first film debuted in January 2006.
In the third film, which arrived in theaters in 2008, Ryan graduates, but Grabeel was already
well past his high school years at that point.
Grabeel is thankful for the role, especially because his character was a role model for
many young people.
In 2018, he told Billboard,
"Ryan is not officially gay in any of the movies, but I think anyone that watches him
can identify with who he was in high school: someone trying to figure it out.
And I have young men in high school come up to me saying that, though it's hard to talk
about their sexuality, seeing that kind of character represented in a good light and
a fun way was really helpful to them."
Ashley Tisdale rose to fame playing teenager Maddie Fitzpatrick on The Suite Life of Zack
and Cody.
The show debuted in 2005, the same year that Tisdale turned 20.
The following year, she began her time in the High School Musical franchise as high
school diva Sharpay Evans.
Tisdale didn't mind paying a character who was much younger than she was.
In fact, she's revealed that she actually preferred taking on such roles.
She told The Star Scoop in 2005,
"I never really felt comfortable, even before I was on Disney, doing any like type of roles
that are really mature.
I always wanted to work for Disney my whole life.
It keeps you with such a safe feeling, that you know, you don’t have to show skin, or
do any of that stuff, and it’s comfortable, and I love the characters I portray.
I figure, this is where I want to be right now.
I don’t want to do all those mature roles right now.
I have my whole life to do that.
Not right now."
Monique Coleman is another High School Musical actress who had to act younger than her own
age.
When she first played science club president Taylor McKessie, she was already 25.
This role was special to her because it provided some much-needed representation on the Disney
Channel.
In 2018, she told Billboard,
"It was really important to me because, at that time, there weren't really any other
African-American girls on the Disney Channel, except for Raven.
There also weren't African-American female characters like Taylor.
The idea that I could portray a character that anyone could see and say, 'Yeah, a black
girl can be the smartest girl in school.
She doesn't always have to be sassy', that was part of what really drew me to it."
If Coleman sounds wise beyond her years, perhaps that has something to do with the perspective
she brought to a teenage character while in her twenties.
Perhaps all actors should wait until they're a decade older than their characters if they
want to keep their heads on straight.
Garrett Clayton is pretty much a household name to Generation Z.
He catapulted to fame after a starring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Teen
Beach Movie, which turned him into a teen heartthrob overnight.
But Clayton wasn't actually a teen himself, as he was already in his twenties when the
movie premiered in July 2013.
While Clayton was older than his character, surfer boy Tanner, he still looked baby-faced
enough to convincingly play a teen in the original seaside flick and its 2015 sequel
Teen Beach 2.
Clayton might not have had a problem looking younger than his age, but sounding young was
a different story.
He had to take some creative measures to land the role.
Born "Gary Michael Clayton," the actor discovered that his first name was holding him back.
In a 2019 interview with Broadway World, he revealed,
"For the first six months of living in L.A., most auditions I would get close to booking,
they would call my team and say that, while I was very talented, my name wasn't marketable,
it sounded too old.
So, about a year in, I changed it.
Within that time, I started booking things."
Booboo Stewart became one of Disney's seemingly ageless stars when the first Descendants film
premiered in July 2015 when he was already 21.
He thus spent the first half of his twenties playing Jay, the teenage son of iconic Aladdin
villain Jafar, all the way through to 2019's Descendants 3.
"So when it comes to being sneaky, tricky, all-around, well, snake, nobody beats Jafar."
Being older than your character isn't necessarily a bad thing, and indeed, it seems that age
has brought Stewart some wisdom.
The Descendants franchise wasn't his first foray into a major film series, as he had
previously had a role as a werewolf in the Twilight films as a teenager.
So he knows how to manage the many challenges and temptations that can come with so much
fame.
In an interview with Sarah Scoop, he revealed,
"I've been around [the industry] from such a young age that I feel like I know how to
handle it.
I know who I am, so I try not to let that affect me, and I have friends and family who
can tell me when it's gotten to my head just a little bit.
They'll say, 'Reality check here!'
I think it's really important to surround yourself with people who you know are your
true friends."
It's hard to imagine anyone but Sofia Carson playing Evie in the Descendants franchise,
but the role very nearly went to someone else.
The filmmakers originally passed on Carson because she was still a newcomer to the industry,
and they didn't think she had enough experience to play the part.
One thing that Carson did have experience in, though, was being a high school student,
as she had already graduated when she landed the role of a high school-aged student in
the movie.
By the time Descendants aired in 2015, Carson was 22 years old.
Even though her high school days were behind her, she still did an excellent job portraying
a teenager.
She continued playing the character well into her twenties, with the third film in the franchise
premiering a few months after her 26th birthday.
Not only did Carson prove that she wasn't too inexperienced for the part, she also proved
her ability to play a character younger than herself to perfection.
"They don't call her evil for nothing."
Baby-faced Disney Channel star Mitchell Hope was already in his twenties when the first
Descendants film debuted in 2015.
The actor played Ben, the son of Belle and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.
Hope looked younger than his age, so it was easy to believe that he was a teenager throughout
the trilogy.
Even though he was playing a high school student in the film, his school days were long behind
him, although he might've returned to student life if he hadn't landed the role.
In 2015, he told the Canadian magazine Tribute,
"I quit acting right before I got the audition.
I was done with it, I was ready to go out and get a 'real' job, you know what I mean?
I was going to go back to university and stuff."
Fortunately for Hope's career, he got the part, and, instead of going back to university,
he had an opportunity to relive his high school days.
Jason Earles played Miley Stewart's older brother, Jackson, on Hannah Montana.
He made for a pretty convincing 16-year-old, but he was actually 28 when the show premiered
in 2006!
That means that for most of the series' run, he was playing a teenager when he was already
in his thirties.
"It was a role that I didn't think that I was right for.
I was like, 'Hannah Montanna?
What a weird name for a show.
Who's gonna watch that?
That just sounds crazy to me.'"
When the show started filming, Earles didn't have any idea it would become as popular as
it did, so he probably didn't think he'd be playing a teenager for half a decade.
In 2009, he told The Star Scoop,
"I think we all were really optimistic that the show would get picked up and that the
kids would like it, but for it to turn into as popular a family show as it has, I think
we're all pleasantly surprised by that."
As an adult, Earles was better able to appreciate just how special the show was.
He also told The Star Scoop,
"It sort of reminds us of all those TGI Friday shows.
Instead of just a kid show on the Disney Channel, it feels like something you could put on network
television, 8:00 at night, and families would sit around and watch together."
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