Discuss: How Important is Age Accuracy?

Let's face it -- Hollywood's view of age is skewed, at best. The industry might try to avoid fine lines and wrinkles like the plague, botoxing and facelifting all over the place, but it also likes to slip older actors and actresses into young roles ... not to mention making younger stars look older and more mature, and basically playing with age as the industry sees fit. And it's not only behind the scenes. From old-school 90210 to the big screen, age gets wiggled.

For example, Online Education lists a bunch of films where older actors ignore their age to play college students -- some being in their 20's and a close jump to college life, and others being ridiculously over-aged for their work, like a 39-year-old Harland Williams popping up as a college student in Sorority Boys. But age also becomes a factor in book adaptations.

As Elisabeth noted last week, there's a rumor that Robert Downey Jr. is in talks to play the vampire Lestat in a new re-do of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. (Although no word on which books will be included, and how.) Big-screen treatments of Rice's work have always been my favorite examples of throwing age out the window. Where something like the Twilight series has been very particular about picking appropriate ages, casting peeps have a field day with Rice.

Like many vamp stories, the Chronicles are all about youth that lives on forever -- albeit with a more mature bend that doesn't include continuing lifetimes of high school. Lestat was roughly twenty when he was turned, and was subsequently played by an over-30 Tom Cruise and a late-20s Stuart Townsend. A decade might be a big jump, but it worked alright because Lestat was already a man when he was turned. But then you get Armand, described as a boy, turned at about 17 years, yet played by Antonio Banderas, in his 30s. And now -- the potential for a 40-something, greying-haired Robert Downey Jr. to play Lestat.

Obviously, age is but a number to Hollywood, but what do you think? Should Hollywood continue to have a heyday with age, or is it time to be at least a little more age-conscious with casting?