15 Pictures Proving That People in the Past Used to Look Older

It all started when a former baseball player raised a curious question on Twitter. “This is nonsense,” he wrote, “but did people in the past look older when they were younger?” What he really meant was that people used to age much faster than they do today. The replies on the thread very clearly showed that the answer to this question was “yes.” Twitter became filled with images of people who, though in their early thirties, looked like they were in their fifties, and of celebrities, who many years ago, looked older than they are now.

Bright Side collected images of celebrities proving that this very strange phenomenon turned out to be true.

1. In the first season of Cheers, George Wendt was 34, while his sidekick, John Ratzenberger, was 35.

2. Pat Morita was 52 when he appeared in The Karate Kid. Next to him, you see Ralph Macchio, the actor who played Daniel in the trilogy, at age 57.

3. Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin were respectively 45 and 43 years old when they acted in The Dirty Dozen.

4. Abe Vigoda was 54 when he played Detective Fish in the series, Barney Miller.

5. Wilford Brimley was barely 50 years old when he appeared in Cocoon.

6. This is what Roy Orbison looked like at age 29.

7. Steve Martin was 42 and John Candy was 37 when they shared the stage in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

8. Judy Garland at 39 in the film, Judgement at Nuremberg.

9. Singer Otis Redding was 26 when this photo was taken.

10. Jason Alexander was just 30 years old when the first season of Seinfeld aired.

11. William Hartnell, the first Doctor Who, was 55 when the series began. Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who, was 51 when he started playing the character.

12. Both of these great musicians performed at Woodstock. Here’s Carlos Santana in a show in Hamburg in 1973, when he was only 26 years old. At his side was Joe Cocker, who was the same age in 1970.

13. Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton were 49 and 51 when they appeared in the CBS hit, All in the Family.

14. Frank Sinatra played Danny Ocean in the first version of Ocean’s 11 when he was 44 years old. In the 2001 version, when George Clooney played the same character, he was 39.

15. Adam West, the actor who made the Batman character famous, was 37 when the series began. Christian Bale was 38 when The Dark Knight Rises was shot.

Do you have the same feeling when you look at a picture of your grandparents when they were young? Would you like to share a picture of yourself alongside one of a relative at the same age to compare them? We look forward to reading your thoughts in the comment section.