On-Screen Romantic Partners with the Biggest Age Gaps

In most movies and TV shows, we see more or less evenly matched couples in terms of age. But some writers and directors bend that rule by casting actors on the opposite ends of the age spectrum. Sometimes it’s justified by the story, and other times it just happens.

Here are several movies where actors playing couples have a huge age difference.

1. Six Days Seven Nights — 27-year difference

When Ivan Reitman gave the lead roles in Six Days Seven Nights to 56-year-old Harrison Ford and 29-year-old Anne Heche, he didn’t know people would hate him. First of all, the on-screen romance looked completely fake due to the huge age difference. And secondly, just before the start of filming, he found out that Heche lives with a woman — actress Ellen DeGeneres. So the on-screen love scenes were painful to film and impossible to watch without cringing.

2. Blaze — 28-year difference

The 45th governor of Louisiana, Earl Long, made history by at one point in time he was doing his work from a psychiatric hospital. The whats and hows are not important here. It’s the why that’s interesting. One of the reasons for Long’s hospitalization was his affair with the renowned stripper and burlesque star Blaze Starr. A few decades later, this scandalous story was made into Ron Shelton’s comedy biopic Blaze, starring 64-year-old Paul Newman and 28-year-old Lolita Davidovich.