Go back as far as you want, but odds are you won't find any evidence of these puttering old prunes in their prime. Some people are just born old, we guess.
Telly Savalas- Before making a name for himself as a salty old lollypop-licking detective in famed 1970s TV show Kojak, a 40-something Savalas was cast as 61-year-old James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld with minimal time in the make-up chair. Plato looked younger in 1963.
Ernest Borgnine- Remember the movie Marty? About the dumpy fat dude no one loves? Well, that was Ernie in 1955. His burnt-out old Manhattan cabbie in Escape from New York? That was 1981. It's kind of amazing that the old dude is still kicking around—what's his secret? Well... it's probably best if we just let him explain it.
William Hickey- According to IMDB, Hickey was once a child actor, but judging by his raspy voice and sallow skin, you'd never believe it. When not training geriactors like Herbert Berghof, this mentor to the dinosaurs kept busy in his 40s and 50s by playing far older dudes in films like Prizzi's Honor. Were he alive today, we imagine this timeless thespian would have founded an academy in Boca to teach retirees how to act dead.
Burgess Meredith- Thanks to iconic rolls as the Penguin on the Batman TV series and Mickey in the Rocky films, Meredith made a long career of playing cantankerous old cranks. Chalk it up to his mummified mug, we guess, because this guy played old on episodes of The Twilight Zone way back in 1959. Was he ever a young? Is there some Benjamin Button shit going on here?
James Tolkan- Thanks to his compact build, cue-ball dome and aggressive mien, Tolkan easily fit into old timer shoes from the outset of his career, playing crusty cops, crooked politicians and historical figures with the same ease your grandpa employs in removing his dentures. But it was grouchy authority figure rolls in Back to The Future and Top Gun that made him an old fart well before his first social security check.
Gene Hackman- First things first: Hackman played our favorite mischievous old trickster in The Royal Tenenbaums, but that doesn't mean the dude grew into the part. Check out his early work in Bonnie and Clyde and Downhill Racer, where his already severely receding hairline stood in stark contrast to costars Warren Beatty and Robert Redford's finely coiffed manes, or as hardboiled, too-old-for-this-shit cop Popeye Doyle in 1971's The French Connection.
Sir Anthony Hopkins- It's not that Hopkins has been cast for characters in excruciating excess of his years, he's just never looked young playing them. Long before roles as wizened old cannibal Hannibal Lector and a jowly President Nixon, Hopkins got his break as a young Richard The Lionheart in 1968's The Lion in Winter—and he still looked like a grizzly, bearded old knight. Things came full circle in 1993 when Hopkins was knighted, confirming that he is indeed a relic of the Middle Ages.
Lee Van Cleef- This steely-eyed badass was playing grizzled and world-weary before your parents moved out of their parents' house. That was him, in 1966, staring down Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, looking back then the way Clint looks now. You get the feeling when this dude was born, the doctor's slapped him, cut the cord, then politely asked the nurse to shave the kid's 5 o'clock shadow.