Baby and toddler roles present a casting challenge. Most baby casting is for close-ups in film and television. Child labor laws limit the amount of time for these little actors, making baby actors expensive and time-consuming. A solution is to use twins for one character, as the producers of the television show "Full House" did with the Olsen twins. Toddler actors fill a variety of characters, usually someone's child in a soap opera, television show or film. Production teams strive to create the best environment for these small actors to share expressions and emotions naturally, without detailed study and with economical rehearsal.
Young actors include children to teenagers. Child actors fill the characters in classic and modern theater, television and film. Broadway productions showcase young actors in productions such as "The Lion King." Children appear in television soap operas, sitcoms and dramas. Some film productions show the children growing up, as in the "Harry Potter" series. Young actors are cast as the lonely child such as Harry, the bully such as Malfoy and the bookworm such as Hermoine. Major character types include the good-looking popular kid or the nerd. Their character's socio-economic status can range from rich, middle class or poor.
Actors in the young adult category often fill the romantic leads. The basic plot involves a pattern where the boy gets the girl, the boy loses the girl, and usually ending in the boy gets girl back. These romantic leads involving a hero and heroine can appear in tragedy or comedy, as exemplified in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer's Night Dream." With the beginnings of Romanticism, the hero with noble characteristics turned into the anti-hero, a young man involved in challenging existing ethical and moral codes. Film, television and drama are filled with disillusioned young adults in sitcoms such as "Friends" or dramas such as "Sid and Nancy."
As actors reach middle age, their choices of leading romantic roles may begin to decline. But the choices of leading character roles, including those involved in romance, can grow. "Bridges of Madison County" illustrates the use of middle-aged actors playing a housewife and photographer who fall in love. Middle-aged actors can still occupy leading roles in action, adventure, drama and comedy. In the "National Treasure" films, actors Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Helen Mirren and Sean Bean participate in a James Bond-type story of intrigue, combined with plots including father-son dynamics and friendship betrayal. Whether playing the villain or hero, actors in middle age can help to center or ground the production.
As actors reach the mature years of seniority, the number of romantic roles decline, yet the number of complex roles can increase. In plays and films such as "Driving Miss Daisy," senior actors Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy stretch the stereotypical roles of an aging Southern woman and polite manservant into complicated elders facing the end of an era dominated by discrimination and the end of their independent lives. Senior actors fill roles of the matriarch and patriarch. On the long-running television show "Dallas," Miss Ellie and Jock Ewing offered advice to their grownup brood of oilmen. In the "Harry Potter" series, head wizards Dumbledore and Professor McGonigle sit at the head table and keep the young wizards in line.