@professional_portalMoaning Myrtle is supposed to be 14. Shirley Henderson was 37 when she took the role in Harry Potter, and the gap bothered her before it ever reached a screen. When the part first came up, her reaction was basically "Hold on, how old is this girl?" The casting director's instruction was to try out and leave her age out of it. So she showed up in a white shirt, a black skirt, and a ponytail, and her own read on the situation was "This is ridiculous." She also wasn't sure she could pass for a teenager. "I did my wee bit for them, and they thanked me." The offer didn't arrive right away. It came months after that first try. By then she was 37, which put her at more than double Myrtle's age. Her explanation for why nobody blinked: "Myrtle is an old person in a young person's body." The ghostly look, she said, meant "we could get away with it." And that's the whole trick. A teenage ghost at Hogwarts played by a woman twice her age, and the age difference just never registered for most people.

@professional_portalMoaning Myrtle is supposed to be 14. Shirley Henderson was 37 when she took the role in Harry Potter, and the gap bothered her before it ever reached a screen. When the part first came up, her reaction was basically "Hold on, how old is this girl?" The casting director's instruction was to try out and leave her age out of it. So she showed up in a white shirt, a black skirt, and a ponytail, and her own read on the situation was "This is ridiculous." She also wasn't sure she could pass for a teenager. "I did my wee bit for them, and they thanked me." The offer didn't arrive right away. It came months after that first try. By then she was 37, which put her at more than double Myrtle's age. Her explanation for why nobody blinked: "Myrtle is an old person in a young person's body." The ghostly look, she said, meant "we could get away with it." And that's the whole trick. A teenage ghost at Hogwarts played by a woman twice her age, and the age difference just never registered for most people.