She actually played Laurence Harvey's mum, but yes, she was only a couple years older than he.

Wasn't Angela Lansbury younger or just a bit older than Sinatra and she played his evil mother in Manchurian Candidate
"A daffy woman constantly strives to become a star"

They just said on TCM that Greer Garson was actually 37 when she made "Mrs. Miniver". Guess Greer lied about here age. When you think about it, she was kind of old by Hollywood standards becoming a star with "Mr Chips" in 1939. Joan Crawford was born one year after Greer Garson and by the early 1940s she was washed up at MGM and Garson was just getting started.

Joan Crawford once remarked "I'd play Wallace Beery's mother if the role was good enough".
And it's not always the ladies, Lionel Jeffries played Dick Van Dyke's father in CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, even though he was six months younger than Van Dyke.

Yes, but Cary Grant was ageless.

In the same vein, Cary Grant's mother in "North by Northwest" was only a little over 7 years older than he was in real life.

As Jim Henry (Robert Tessier) said to Chaney (Charles Bronson) in ' Hard Times ', " You're pretty good ".

In "Adams's Rib" Spencer Tracy's mother Mrs.Mondello was a year older than Tracey. In "Young Philadelpians" Paul Newman was four years older than his "mother." These things happen. Casting doesn't have to be perfect, just good.

Sorry, I can't agree with you. However, don't know if you know it or not, but she was married to him in real life for a couple of years.

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Because of the mother-and-son relationship in the movie, the studio asked them to delay their marriage until after the film had left theaters, and so they did.

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Wow! I had never heard that about Garson being married to Ney. Now, THAT would have been a strange sight to behold and choke down seeing the two of them together out in the public after the movie came out! (Garson and Pidgeon married in real life I could see, but Garson and Ney??!)

Well, I don't know about that. My mother was 19 when I was born, and until I was in my early 20s many people thought we were sisters. She stayed quite youthful-looking into her mid-60s. She never had any plastic surgery, and chalked her looks up to good genes and drugstore brand moisturizer. People used to make Dorian Gray jokes about Mom, saying that a portrait of her must be in the attic doing all her aging for her. She would just smile mysteriously.
What I find awkward about Garson and Ney's being a romantic couple and getting married the year after
Miniver
came out is not that
she
looked so young but that
he
looked so young.