Young historical characters represented as too old in films/TV portrayals
@citoyen-robespierre
There are a few more points about this:
1. Rooted in earlier stage tradition, leading roles and/or authority figures would be played by older/more experienced actors. This can affect other writers’ depictions of them. Orczy’s description of a tall and cadaverous Robespierre is visually modelled on Henry Irving in Sardou’s play Robespierre. Irving was 61 when he played the part. The character in the script was also aged up to allow for a preposterous plot-line in which he has an adult illegitimate son, fathered when he was a young lawyer in Arras. (To have had an adult child by 1794, he would have to have fathered him as a geeky bespectacled schoolboy in Paris… Most unlikely!)
2. It’s about not wanting them to be perceived as ‘romantic lead’ material. If film-makers want a character to be seen as either an authority figure or a villain (and someone else as the ‘romantic lead’), they cast accordingly by physical attractiveness and/or ageing up the character. Characters the film-maker wants you to like/fall in love with are invariably cast as better-looking than they really were, and vice versa for those they don’t want you to like.