If not Rickman- then who

[Carol]

Nightbreed wrote:
>
> I don't get a sense of Snape's age in the film. After all, it's like
Richman is all wrinkled and gray. 

Carol responds:
I think you left out a "not" there. (I do it all the time!)

Nightbreed:
But yeah, most of the Order to have been in the same year at Hogwarts
should be in their mid-thirties in the movies. 
> 
> I don't recall Rowling ever saying how long Harry's parents were out
of school for, but by my estimates they should have been in their
early twenties when they died, so the actors in the film are far too
old to play them. If Harry's eleven in the first book / movie and his
parents were married and had him within a few years of graduating
Hogwarts (when they were 17) then they couldn't have been more than 20
- 25 when they died and so Snape, Lupin, Pettagrew, Sirius should all
be about 32 - 36 in the  first film. 

Carol responds:

We know their exact ages from the grave markers in the last book. They
would have been eighteen, not seventeen, when they left Hogwarts,
having been born in January (Lily) and March (James). Given these
birthdates, the repeated references to James as fifteen in the SWM
(Snape's Worst Memory) scene are incorrect. (But, then, we all know
that JKR can't add; she seems to forget that, unlike Harry, whose
birthday is the same as her own, July 31, most students don't remain
the same age for an entire school year.)

Other indicators or their ages came in interviews. She said that
Snape, the same age as the Marauders, was thirty-four or thirty-five
in Gof (for some reason, she apparently remembered that *he* had a
January birthday, which we know from her website) and that Sirius
Black (whose birthday is not stated anywhere) was twenty-one or
twenty-two when the Potters died. Since they were both twenty-one
according to the gravestone, he would have had to be born in September
or October to be twenty-two but still in the same school year as MWPP,
snape, and Lily. Lupin, we learn from JKR's website, was born in March
(like James). Peter Pettigrew would also, most likely, have been
twenty-one at the time of the Potters' murder, twenty-two if he was
born in September or October.)

However, none of this information was available to the filmmakers when
they first cast those roles, so we get a forty-something James, a Lily
who could be in her thirties, a Snape of indeterminate age (at least
he has the black wig with no gray in it!), and, later, Lupin, Black,
and Pettigrew all seeming to be in their forties.

If the Potter films are ever remade, and I expect they will be, the
new filmmakers can learn from and avoid the mistakes not only in
casting (and, IMO, costuming!) but also in writing, with key scenes
altered or left out in these versions. I hope they'll stay with a
single director throughout. (Not that Chris Columbus is the world's
greatest director, but at least he was true to the story (unless you
count the Hagrid scene at the end of CoS). Cuaron's changes started a
chain reaction that the later directors had to live with.)

Sorry. Got off track at the end. Anyway, you're right that MWP and
Snape should be in their thirties throughout the films, starting at
thirty-one and dying at (about) thirty-six for Sirius and thirty-eight
for the other three (assuming that Pettigrew has had his birthday).

As it is, we can imagine them all as ten years older, with Rickman the
same age as the others). Fortunately, we'll only see MWPP and possibly
Lily together with Severus Snape as teenagers in the Pensieve scenes
from "the Prince's Tale" (if they're retained). He won't appear in
"The Forest Again" with all the others, and they, of course, won't
appear in any of his scenes. So all we really need to "forget" is that
James and Lily, who will almost certainly be played by the same actors
who've played them all along, died at twenty-one.

Carol, apologizing for being so wordy in this post!