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Casting a younger version of a famous actor’s character can be tricky. When it works out, I mean really works out, it’s always fun. Take, for example, Men in Black III. I like that movie, and a big part of that is the fact Josh Brolin was great casting as young Agent K, as played by Tommy Lee Jones. They look fairly similar, but on top of that Brolin embodies a younger version of Jones quite well. I recently started watching The Old Man, and it has yielded one of the best examples of younger-version casting I have ever seen.
On that show, we see the younger version of Jeff Bridges’ character quite often. Now, that’s daunting enough as is, because Bridges is an iconic actor with a famous persona as well. We all know that “Jeff Bridges” vibe. The actor they found for that role is good. He looks like he could plausibly be a younger version of Bridges, and his mannerisms are reasonable enough as is. However, John Lithgow also plays a character on The Old Man, and they found a great actor to play young Lithgow.
I had never envisioned a “young Lithgow” before, but that’s a really difficult needle to thread. Lithgow is as distinct an actor as there is. I don’t just mean his look, but also his particular energy on screen. The actor they found is named Christopher Redman, and he does an incredible Lithgow. It’s not just that he looks like a younger version of Lithgow. He has Lithgow done pat. That includes his voice. Lithgow’s voice is so distinct, and so is the way he speaks, but Redman absolutely nails it. To find somebody who can look like Lithgow and also embody him is amazing. This goes beyond mere impression. Redman is acting like a younger version of Lithgow’s character.
Now, there’s a lot more to The Old Man than this. Having said that, Redman’s casting was a real coup, and his performance really impressed me. If nothing else, the show delivered something I never expected to see: A killer Lithgow-mirroring performance.
