10 Behind The Scenes Reasons For Harry Potter Character Traits

Though the vast majority of the teenage characters in the series are played by age-approximate actors, there is one amusing exception, and that's Moaning Myrtle.

The wailing ghost who haunts Hogwarts is instead played by the great Shirley Henderson in Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire, and as noted by many fans, Henderson looks markedly older than her castmates.

That's because Henderson was 36 years of age when she first played Myrtle, as the filmmakers ultimately decided to cast an older actress in the part to make their natural ageing seem less noticeable.

Myrtle being dead and all, it would've made no sense for her to blatantly age, and had they hired an actual teenager to play her, she would've been distractingly older when re-appearing in Goblet of Fire a few years later.

Granted, you can argue that hiring an actress more than double the character's age is more distracting than that would've ever been, or they could've just hired a younger-looking actress in their early 20s instead, but there was at least some sort of logic at play here.