Fun fact: Mary Gibbs (left) is the daughter of the late Rob Gibbs, one of the people who worked on this movie.
Often in animation, an adult female voice actress will voice a young child character of either sex, possibly because it's not always easy to work with kids, and the inevitability of a young boy's voice breaking once he reaches puberty.
Other times, there just happens to be a good kid VA available for the job. However, when the child actor starts sounding a bit too old, this usually results in them getting replaced, particularly with boys, for the reasons mentioned above. That being said, if real time passes in the series and they want to signify child character growing up, they will deliberately keep the same actor as their voice matures.
Often overlaps with Amateur Cast, as young children don't need to be professionally trained actors to sound convincingly like young children.
Contrast Dawson Casting, where older actors play younger characters, though the two can overlap if the child character is voiced by a child actor who's older than them.
Examples:
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Anime
- Former Montreal-based child voiceover actress Morgan Hallett was 11 to 12 years old when she started to playing characters in both English redubs of Adventures of the Little Koala and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
- Aikatsu:
- Ichigo Hoshimiya, heroine of Aikatsu, started the series at 13 years old and is voiced by Sumire Morohoshi, who was 12 years old when the series started recording.
- Most of the Japanese voice actors for the idols in the anime were also teenagers when it started production. For many of them, it was their first role in an anime.
- The English dub cast of Bakuten Shoot Beyblade features child and teenage voice actors who were close to the characters' ages at the time (though there were some exceptions). For many, it was one of their first voice acting jobs.
- In Barakamon, all the child characters are voiced by actual children. This isn't the case in the English dub, where they're voiced by adults.
- In the original Japanese version of Barefoot Gen, Gen, his little brother Shinji, and Ryuta were voiced by actual young boys, whereas in the English dub they were all voiced by women.
- For the first arc of Capeta (the first 14 episodes), the title character was voiced by Naoto Adachi, who was 12 years old at the time.
- Cardcaptor Sakura:
- Nelvana's Cardcaptors dub of the show did this trope quite well with some characters. The 10-years old main character Sakura was voiced by then 11-year old Carly McKillip, while 10-years old Syaoran was voiced by first Rhys Huber and then Jordan Kilik, who were either in their preteens or early teens at the time of recording. When the second movie was brought over by Geneon, this was not the case, with Syaoran voiced by voice actress Mona Marshall.
- The Latin-American Spanish dub had the then-teenaged Uraz Huerta playing Syaoran in both the TV series and the second movie. For the record, Huerta's voice sounded quite deeper in the movie.
- In Code Geass, V.V. is voiced by Kazato Tomizawa, who was 10 years old when V.V. first appeared near the end of the first season. The character is not really a child, though, but an adult man whose physical growth was stunted when he got his Geass as a child.
- Corpse Princess has a few examples.
- Ouri's Japanese and English voice actors were both teenagers when they did the role; Tatsuya Hasome was 19 while Aaron Dismuke was 17-18.
- Aoi Yūki plays the 16-year-old Akira, and was roughly the same age as her at the time of recording.
- For Cowboy Bebop, Sunrise repeated the approach taken in Escaflowne, casting 15-year-old Aoi Tada as Ed (and having her sing for the soundtrack).
- The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family: Danny McKinnon, born in 1990, was 13-14 years-old at the time when the series was licensed and dubbed into English on DVD in 2004. He voices Dai Daichi, who is an even younger boy at 9 years of age.
- Digimon Adventure:
- The Latin American dub cast child actors for Tai and Gomamon (Miguel Angel Leal, who was later replaced by Gerry Meza), Matt and Agumon (Uraz Huerta), and T.K. and Biyomon (Lupita Leal).
- The Swedish dub cast several children and teenagers between 11 and 16 as the DigiDestined, with the exception of Joe who was played by an actor in his late 20's. The Digimon were all voiced by experienced voice actors.
- For Dororo (2019), Rio Suzuki was fourteen when she voiced the titular child.
- Like most newer Dragon Quest games, the English dub of Dragon Quest: Your Story has actual kids voice the child characters.
- Ao in Eureka Seven AO was a middle schooler voiced by a fourteen-year-old boy in the Japanese version.
- Kisa, Hiro, Megumi, and most of the younger versions of the main characters in the first Fruits Basket anime were voiced by young kids in the English dub. They were all grown up by the time of the second anime, so this trope was averted there. (Though Kate Bristol returned to reprise Kisa while gracefully passing Young Yuki's role to Amanda Lee. Hiro's voice actor also returned but as Kakeru Manabe instead.)
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- 9 to 14-(then back to 9 up to 13-)year-old Alphonse Elric, from the English dub of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), was voiced by then 12-year-old Aaron Dismuke throughout the whole series. By Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, puberty hit him pretty hard, so Alphonse was recast as Maxey Whitehead (Dismuke made a reappearance as Alphonse's father in his teen years).
- Similarly, Hughes' daughter Elicia was voiced by 12-year-old Tierney Titus, but in Brotherhood, was voiced by then 21-year-old Cherami Leigh.
- Also in Brotherhood, Nina Tucker was voiced in Japanese by then 10-year-old Sumire Morohoshi.
- Manaka Iwami was 18 when she voiced the high school-aged Chiaki in Gamers! (2015).
- Some of the child characters in Haibane Renmei were voiced by actual children in the English dub.
- While most of the voices of the kids in the English dub of Hamtaro would be considered Dawson Casting, Penelope's owner Kylie was voiced by an actual girl her age.
- In the Italian dub of Komi Can't Communicate, Nono and Nene are voiced by two young girls.
- Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: Candidates for the roles of Lucy-May and the other child characters were invited from children's theater companies and the general public, and were selected through auditions from over 60 people. In the end, all of them were voiced by adult actors, except Tob Popple, who was voiced by Mie Suzuki (who was 8 at the time).
- Maya the Bee:
- The German version has an actual female child voicing the title character in all incarnations which is still in use for the CGI animated series by Studio 100 and animated films.
- Willy is voiced by a child in the Dutch dub.
- Some of the child characters are voiced by actual children in the English dub of Mega Man: Upon a Star.
- The original dub of Mermaid's Scar had 11-year-old Yuuichi Harada voicing Masato.
- Young Johan Liebert of Monster (1994) was voiced by the then 10, later 11-year-old Yūto Uemura. Averted in the dub, where it's a case of Cross-Dressing Voices as he's voiced by 43, later 44-year-old Julie Ann Taylor.
- In the original dub of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Lacus was voiced by the then 16-year-old Chantal Strand. However, her singing voice was done by adult Jillian Michaels.
- My Happy Marriage: In the English dub, the child versions of Miyo and Kaya are played by child actresses. Juliet Peldon (Miyo) was 7, while her sister Lila (Kaya) was 10.
- The English dub cast of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is notable for casting three actual kids in the lead roles, although one child actor has to do a sometimes-convincing, sometimes-overdone French accent.
- Fábio Lucindo was 13 years old when he voiced Shinji Ikari in the 1st Brazilian Portuguese dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Similar to their live-action works, NHK's Edutainment anime will use child actors for any child protagonists:
- Haruka Fukuhara, who was ten when the show began, played Main in Cookin' Idol Ai! Mai! Main!.
- Kitchen Sentai Cookrun uses child actors to play the titular heroes. However, in the first season, Cumin was played by a 6-year-old child despite the character in question being a preschooler.
- Since the late 2010s, NYAV Post has been casting children in not only in the movies they dub (such as those distributed by GKIDS as mentioned above), but also in some of the shows they dub as well such as Great Pretender (with the younger version of the protagonist being voiced by an actual kid) and Kotaro Lives Alone (which mainly features young kindergarteners voiced by actual children with the exception of the titular character voiced by Cherami Leigh).
- Oni Ai: Akiko and Arisa are voiced by a 14 year-old and 12 year-old, respectively.
- In PaRappa the Rapper, the main character, Parappa, is voiced by Miyu Irino, who was 12 when he started acting in the show.
- Pokémon the Series:
- Ash Ketchum's original VA in the Latin American dub, Gabriel Ramos, was 13 years old when he started voicing him. The voice shift due to undergoing puberty is pretty noticeable during the first few seasons.
- In Pokémon: The Power of Us, the young character Largo is voiced by then 14-year-old Mana Ashida.
- In a case of children voicing cute creatures, Sentret was voiced in its first appearance by then 4 year old Rena Taylor.
- Pretty Cure:
- Mariya Ise was 17 when she took the role of 13-year-old Cure Lemonade in Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
- Ayaka Ohashi was 18 when she voiced Lance, a child fairy, in Doki Doki! PreCure. However, this was not the case for Glitter Force Doki Doki, where Lance was voiced by then-30-year-old Bryce Papenbrook.
- Haruka Fukuhara was 18 when she voiced 14-year-old Cure Custard in KiraKira★Precure à la Mode.
- Hana Hishikawa was 18 when she landed the role of 14-year-old Cure Precious in Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure.
- Pretty Series:
- Ayane Sakura was only 18 when she began voicing teenage character Riine in Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live.
- Mirai's voice actress in Kiratto Pri☆Chan, Koko Hayashi, was 15 years old at the time of recording. In addition, one episode features animated personas of YouTube stars Kan and Aki, who were voiced by the actual elementary school-aged girls themselves.
- In Serial Experiments Lain, Kaori Shimizu made her voice acting debut as Lain Iwakura when she was 15 years old, marking the beginning of her voiceover career. In between recording sessions, she would study for her high school entrance exams. She also voiced Lain in the video game.
- The English dub of Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry cast the young Reilly Harrison for the apparently 7-year-old Emily, and the rarity of this is mentioned in the audio commentary. Luci Christian, an adult who commonly voices children, did sub in for a scene or two, though.
- The English dub of Strawberry Marshmallow cast young girls around the characters' age. The results are adorable.
- Any Studio Ghibli film that has children (which is pretty much all of them, barring some exceptions) is bound to have them voiced by actual children.
- Grave of the Fireflies has Setsuko, who is a five-year-old girl, voiced by Ayano Shiraishi... who was five back then. Her lines had to be recorded before her scenes were animated, and because the animators were not used to having to do this, they tried to avoid angles from where her mouth could be seen.
- In Spirited Away, the main character Chihiro/Sen is voiced by young actress Rumi Hiiragi, while in the English dub, she's voiced by child actress and Lilo & Stitch star Daveigh Chase. For Haku, he was voiced by then 13 year old Miyu Irino in Japanese. However, the English dub averts this, with Jason Marsden voicing him.
- In My Neighbor Totoro, the two lead sisters weren't voiced by children in the original Japanese version and the Streamline dub, but Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning provided their voices in Disney's dub.
- In the Disney dub of Kiki's Delivery Service, Kiki was voiced by then 16-year-old Kirsten Dunst.
- In Howl's Moving Castle, the young boy Markl was voiced by then-child actor Ryunosuke Kamiki, and in the dub was voiced by a young Josh Hutcherson.
- Ponyo had Yuria Nara as Ponyo and Hiroki Doi as Sosuke — both ten years old at the time. The dub had Noah Cyrus (aged 9) and Frankie Jonas (also aged 9) as Ponyo and Sosuke respectively.
- The dub for My Neighbors the Yamadas had Daryl Sabara as Noboru and Liliana Mumy as Nonoko.
- From Up on Poppy Hill had an interesting case in which Riku, a child character, had to be recast midway through the dub due to his original voice actor (a young Alex Wolff, to be precise) going through puberty. He was replaced by future The Good Dinosaur star Raymond Ochoa, but Wolff's performance was still kept in the film until a certain point.
- Only Yesterday had ten-year-old Alison Fernandez as the young version of Taeko in the dub, along with various other child voice actors including Ava Acres, Madeleine Rose Yen, Jaden Betts, and Gianella Thielmann — however, the two exceptions in this film are the two adults being played by Stephanie Sheh and Hope Levy.
- Most of the children in Sweetness & Lightning are voiced by actual kids, such as Rina Endou (who was 10 years old as of the anime's run in the summer and fall of 2016) as Tsumugi.
- Tamagotchi Friends: The English Tamagotchi! dub that aired in Australia had many of the characters voiced by children (many of whom appear to share the same voice), including Mametchi, Memetchi, Chamametchi, Lovelitchi, and Telelin.
- Vick from Vicky the Viking was voiced by a boy in the German dub.
- The Vision of Escaflowne:
- 16-year-old Hitomi was the debut role of Maaya Sakamoto, who was also 16 at the time of recording and was discovered through an extensive talent hunt aimed at finding a "real girl" to play her.
- In the first English dub, 15-year-old Dilandau Albatou was voiced by 13/14-year-old Andrew Francis.
- In the 1979 pilot Unico: Black Cloud and White Feather by Sanrio Animation, Unico was voiced by Hiroya Oka, who was a young boy at the time of the short's release.
- In Wandering Son, the middle schooler Nitori was voiced by a fourteen-year-old boy. The issue here is that his voice had already began to deepen, as it's a plot point that Nitori's voice is prepubescent until the very end of the anime.
- Ai Ohto in Wonder Egg Priority is voiced by Kanata Aikawa, who was 16 at the time.
- In the Filipino dub of the Yo-kai Watch anime, Nate and Katie were voiced by child actors Miggs Cuaderno and Jillian Ward, who were aged 11 and 10 respectively at the time the dub premiered.
- Witch Hat Atelier:
- Qifrey's apprentices (Coco, Agott, Tetia and Richeh) and Tartah, who are all preteens, are all voiced by child and teen actors in the Brazilian Portuguese dub.
- Coco's child self is portrayed by child actress Angelica Tuccini in the Italian dub. Similarly, Tartah, a preteen boy, is voiced by preteen voice actor Gabriele Tonti in the same dub.
- Custas, a preteen, is portrayed by eighteen-year-old actor Toshiki Kumagai in Japanese.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Shunsuke Kazama was only 17 when he started voicing main character Yugi Mutou, making him around the same age as Yugi himself (who's 15 to 17 years old over the course of the series).
- Due to starting voice acting at a young age, Rina Hidaka has done this for several series including Last Order in A Certain Magical Index, You in Star Driver, Airi in Ro-Kyu-Bu!, and Silica in Sword Art Online.
- Alongside the aformentioned Aikatsu and Fullmetal Alchemist, Sumire Morohoshi has also been voice acting at a young age and has appeared in shows like Haikyuu!!, Tokyo Ghoul and Bungou Stray Dogs before she came of age.
- Similar to Hidaka, Kanon Takao has voiced younger characters when she was under 20 in series like If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater, The Detective is Already Dead, and Banished from the Hero's Party.
- Miyu Tomita is another voice actress who had roles in Please Tell Me! Galko-chan, Made in Abyss, Gabriel DropOut, We Never Learn, and Wasteful Days of High School Girls prior to turning 20.
Asian Animation
- While not much is known about Simple Samosa's voice actors due to the end credits refusing to list them, going off of a joke in the episode "Simple Hitchki" where Samosa's group meet their voice actors, the child characters Dhokla and Vada are voiced by children (in the original Hindi dub, at least).
Films — Animation
- In Barbie in the Nutcracker, the child characters were all played by actual children. Then-ten-year-old Britt McKillip voiced the Peppermint Girl, eleven-year-old Danny McKinnon voiced the Gingerbread Boy, and eleven-year-old Alex Doduk voiced Tommy.
- Don Bluth:
- 10-year-old Judith Barsi as the orphan Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Ducky in The Land Before Time.
- Like Ducky above, The Land Before Time had Littlefoot and Cera voiced by children: then 12-year-old Gabriel Damon and then 8-year-old Candy Hutson.
- In An American Tail, Fievel was always voiced by a little boy: Phillip Glasser in the first two movies and Thomas Dekker in the Direct-to-Video sequels when Phillip Glasser got too old. In the first film, Tanya was also voiced by a child, Amy Green.
- In Rock-A-Doodle, Edmond was portrayed by a nine-year-old called Toby Scott Ganger in the live-action part. He was also voiced by Toby as an animated cat.
- The child characters in The Secret of NIMH were voiced by actual children.
- 7-year-old Michael Nunes, 7-year-old Tawny Sunshine Glover, and 8-year-old Kendall Cunningham voiced Li’l Bee, Gnatty, and Baby Bug respectively in Thumbelina (1994).
- In The Book of Life, the Detention Kids, alongside the kid versions of Manolo, Maria, and Joaquin, are all voiced by child actors.
- The Boxtrolls has Eggs and Winnie voiced by two pre-teen kids Isaac Hempstead Wright and Elle Fanning.
- Blanky from The Brave Little Toaster is voiced by then eight-year-old Timothy E. Day.
- Cats Don't Dance:
- The Enfant Terrible Darla Dimple's two voice actors (speaking and singing) were both in their early teens at the time of the movie's release.
- Pudge was also voiced by a preteen boy.
- Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure brought in actual young boys to voice a group of lambs who ostracize Cardigan from the flock and continue mocking him. The most notable is Cardigan the lamb who was voiced by Harrison Chad, best known as the original voice of Boots the Monkey from the Nick Jr. series Dora the Explorer from 2000 'til 2007. note
- Agnes in Despicable Me 1 and 2 was originally voiced by Elsie Fisher, who was 6 when the first film came out and 9 when the sequel came out. Despicable Me 3 replaced Fisher with the 7-year-old Nev Scharrel. This also applies to the Japanese dub, where child actress Mana Ashida, who was five at the time, provided Agnes' voice.
- Disney Animated Canon and spin-offs:
- In perhaps one of the oldest examples, the title character of Pinocchio (1940) was voiced by 12-year-old Dickie Jones.
- In Bambi, Donnie Dunagan, Cammie King, and Peter Behn voiced Bambi, Faline, and Thumper as children. All three were born in 1934 and the film was released in 1942. Young Flower too is voiced by a child, Stan Alexander, who left show business at the age of eight and went on to a career in medicine.
- Kathryn Beaumont provided the voices of Alice in Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Wendy in Peter Pan (1953). She was respectively 10 and 13 at the time when the each film began production. In the latter film, Peter Pan himself was voiced by 14-year-old Bobby Driscoll, just a few years older than the character's physical age, and John, Michael, and all the Lost Boys except Cubby were also voiced by young boys.
- The Sword in the Stone: No less than three different child actors played Arthur while the movie was in production: Richard and Robert Reitherman, animator/director Wolfgang Reitherman's sons, and Rickie Sorensen. Rickie is also a case of Dawson Casting, as he was 17 at the time.
- Roo from the Winnie the Pooh franchise is usually voiced by a young boy. Exceptions include Cross-Dressing Voices Dori Whitaker in Tigger Too and Sara Sheen in Christopher Robin. Christopher Robin is usually voiced by a young boy too.
- In Pooh's Heffalump Movie, over 900 children auditioned to star as Lumpy the Heffalump, and Kyle Stanger eventually won the role. He reprised the role in Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie.
- In The Jungle Book (1967), both Mowgli and Hathi Jr. were voiced by young boys. Mowgli was voiced by 12-year-old Bruce Reitherman, who was also the first voice of Christopher Robin and the brother of Richard and Robert Reitherman, who had voiced the young Arthur in The Sword in the Stone.
- For The Aristocats, Toulouse and Berlioz were all voiced by actual children (Gary Dubin and Dean Clark respectively). The same goes for all foreign dubs of the movie including the Japanese version. The exception is Liz English, who voiced Marie when she was in her late 30s.
- Skippy, Sis, Tagalong, and Toby from Robin Hood (1973) are voiced by actual children.
- Penny in The Rescuers is voiced by a young girlーthe then-eight-year-old Michelle Stacy.
- The sequel, The Rescuers Down Under gives us Cody, who was voiced by child actor Adam Ryen.
- The younger versions of the titular characters in The Fox and the Hound were voiced by Keith Coogan and Corey Feldman, the latter of whom would later be known for his role in Gremlins.
- Scottish mouse girl Olivia Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective was voiced by an actual Scottish 8-year-old girl, Susanne Pollatschek.
- 12-year-old Joey Lawrence provided the voice for the titular Oliver in Oliver & Company. Oliver's eventual owner, 7 (8 by the end of the film)-year-old Jenny Foxworth was voiced by now-retired child actress Natalie Gregory.
- Child actor Jason Marin lent his voice to Flounder the fish in The Little Mermaid (1989).
- Chip in Beauty and the Beast was voiced by the then 8-year-old Bradley Pierce.
- In The Lion King, the cub versions of Simba and Nala were voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Nikita Calame, who were 12 and 13 at the time of release respectively. Simba's singing voice was also provided by Jason Weaver, who was a young teen at the time.
- Six-year-old Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch (2002) was voiced by Daveigh Chase, who was almost 12 by the time of the film's release. Chase reprised the role in the franchise's first TV series and its pilot and finale films, where Lilo ages from seven to almost ten years of age in-universe, and Chase's voice does deepen a bit late into the second season.
- Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, set between the original film and Stitch! The Movie, had seven-year-old Lilo voiced by Dakota Fanning instead. Fanning was eleven years old at the time of that film's release.
- All the other kids in the Western continuity were also voiced by kids during its run. Mertle Edmonds, in particular, was voiced by Miranda Paige Walls (born April 2, 1992) for the first film and one of the video games, and then by Liliana Mumy (two years and a fortnight younger than Walls) in the rest of the franchise. Averted in the East Asian Spin-Off shows, as all the kids in the English versions of those shows are voiced by adults with experience in anime dubbing.
- Jeremy Suarez voiced Koda in both Brother Bear and its sequel. He was 13 at the time of the first one's release and 16 at the time of the second's. His voice had deepened quite a bit by then.
- The preteen versions of Anna and Elsa from Frozen are voiced by children, even when singing. This is true of most foreign dubs of the film as well.
- Moana is the first Disney "princess" film to feature a teenage princess voiced by an actress younger than the actual character, with 15-year-old Auli'i Cravalho voicing 16-year-old Moana.
- In Encanto, five-year-old Antonio Madrigal was voiced by Ravi Cabot-Conyers, who was ten when the film released.
- DreamWorks Animation:
- In Over the Hedge, Bucky, Quillo and Spike, the porcupine triplets, were all voiced by actual children (Sami Kirkpatrick, Madison Davenport, and Shane Baumel respectively).
- The Boss Baby has Miles Bakshi (the grandson of Ralph Bakshi) voicing Tim Templeton. Bakshi was only 14 years old when the movie came out. Additionally, the Netflix series had him voiced by a child — Pierce Gagnon.
- Marsai Martin and Mc Kenna Grace were 16 and 14 respectively when voicing 12 year old Pru Granger and Abigail Stone in Spirit Untamed.
- Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken: The titular character’s little brother Sam was voiced by a 12-year-old transgender child (Blue Chapman, specifically).
- Orion in Orion and the Dark was played by 19-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who also played the titular character in Luca (see below).
- Doraemon (Film Series):
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend has the two kids from the underground village, Roku-chan and Moya-kun, being voiced by actual children.
- In the English dub of Stand by Me Doraemon 2, toddler Nobita is voiced by an actual young boy. The rest of the toddler versions of the main characters are voiced by adults.
- The child characters in the English dub of the Norwegian animated film Ella Bella Bingo are voiced by kids.
- The male lead in Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? is voiced by a young teenage boy in the English dub, rather than an adult man like in the Japanese version. The female lead is voiced by teenagers in both Japanese and English, though Suzu Hirose just skirted by in the original version, being 19 at the time of the film's release.
- Any anime movie distributed by GKIDS and Eleven Arts often has dubbing companies (primarily NYAV Post, who is known for doing this in most if not all of their productions) cast children as child characters. Notable examples include A Silent Voice, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Mirai, Okko's Inn, Penguin Highway, and the above-mentioned Fireworks. Other films with English dubs commissioned by either company vary in their implementation of this practice. Some (ex. Lonely Castle in the Mirror) primarily feature voice talent matching the ages of the characters interspersed with a handful of adult actors, while others (ex. The House of the Lost on the Cape) employ Dawson Casting for the entirety of the cast.
- Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: Pinocchio and Carlo, young boys, were voiced by Gregory Mann, who would have been somewhere from 11–13 during filming.
- The animal children that the titular character teaches in Horton Hears a Who! (2008) were all voiced by kids. Most notably, Katie was voiced by 8-year-old Joey King in one of her earliest acting roles.
- The Jewelpet movie Sweets Dance Princess has the 7-year-old Princess Mana voiced by Mana Ashida, who was also 7 at the time.
- While Robin in The LEGO Batman Movie is voiced by a grown man, the Mexican Spanish dub actually cast a real teenager, Emilio Treviño, who was 17 at the time of the film's release.
- In The Little Polar Bear and the sequel(s), all of the child characters (such as Robby and Lars) were voiced by young children in the original Dutch and German version. Foreign dubs had some of the child characters voiced by women.
- Migration has children voicing ducklings Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen Mallard (Tresi Gazal, in her first starring role).
- The 1997 Animated Adaptation of Pippi Longstocking has 15-year-old Melissa Altro voicing 9-year-old Pippi, while 10-year-old Noah Reid and 11-year-old Olivia Garratt voice her two best friends Tommy and Annika.
- Child characters in Pixar films:
- John Morris voiced Andy throughout the 15-year span of the first three Toy Story movies, effectively growing up with him. Sid was also voiced by 12-year-old Erik von Detten. Bonnie has had two different voices: 9-year-old Emily Hahn in Toy Story 3 and 10-year-old Madeleine McGraw in Toy Story 4.
- Dot in A Bug's Life, voiced by 9-year-old Hayden Panettiere.
- In Monsters, Inc., toddler Boo was voiced by Mary Gibbs (pictured above), the little daughter of Pixar employee Rob Gibbs. The crew had to follow Mary around with a microphone and assembled Boo's lines from the things she said while she played, as Mary was unable to sit still during recording.
- Nemo in Finding Nemo, voiced by 9-year-old Alexander Gould. He was replaced by the 11-year-old Hayden Rolence for the 2016 sequel, as Gould would've been too old to reprise his role (they did give him a brief cameo role to make up for it). Squirt, Pearl, Sheldon, Tad, and Darla were also voiced by children.
- Dash in The Incredibles was voiced by 11-year-old Spencer Fox. Similarly to Nemo, the sequel has Fox replaced by the similarly aged Huck Milner, since Fox was too old to reprise the role.
- Russell (9-year-old Jordan Nagai) and Ellie as a child in Up.
- Rejected recordings of Mary Gibbs from Monsters Inc were re-used for some scenes featuring Riley as a toddler in Inside Out, while an unknown child actress recorded some lines where she had spoken dialogue. The 11-year-old Riley herself is voiced by 16-year-old Kaitlyn Dias. For Inside Out 2, where Riley is now 13, she's voiced by Kensington Tallman, who turned 16 a few months after the movie came out.
- The Good Dinosaur: Arlo, the 11-year-old dinosaur, was voiced by the 2001-born Raymond Ochoa. His voice deepened not long after he finished recording his lines. The human child Spot was voiced by the even younger Jack Bright.
- In Coco, Miguel was voiced by 12-year-old Anthony Gonzalez.
- In Luca, Luca was voiced by 14-year-old Jacob Tremblay, Alberto was voiced by 17-year-old Jack Dylan Grazer, and Guilia was voiced by 12 year old Emma Berman.
- In Turning Red, the 13-year old Mei was voiced by Rosalie Chiang, who was 16 when the movie came out.
- The young versions of Ember from Elemental (2023) are voiced by young girls, Clara Lin Ding and Reagan To.
- In The Point, then 10-year old Mike Lookinland voiced Oblio.
- Kimi's classmates in Rugrats in Paris were played by children who had won a contest.
- Scooby-Doo:
- SCOOB! features the younger versions of Mystery Inc. (except Scooby) being voiced by children.
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run: The younger versions of SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward and Sandy shown in flashback sequences are voiced by actual children, those being Antonio Raul Corbio, Jack Gore, Jason Maybaum, and Presley Williams. This is in stark contrast to the Kamp Koral spinoff the flashbacks are a precursor to, which instead had the characters' original voice actors reprise their roles (in addition to Squidward being changed to be older than the others as a camp counselor instead of a fellow scout).
- In The Swan Princess, Prince Derek and Odette's younger selves were voiced by the ten-year-old Adam Wylie and the nine-year-old Adrian Zahiri.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: In a first for the franchise, this film has all the Turtlesnote voiced by teen actors Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Brady Noon (Raph), Micah Abby (Donnie), and Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey) to make them more authentically teenagers.
- In Wolfwalkers, Honor Kneafsey (Robyn Goodfellowe) was twelve and Eva Whittaker (Mebh Óg MacTíre) was eight when recording started. While the former had previous roles, the latter never acted before.
- Emily Prime in World of Tomorrow was voiced by an actual four-year-old, who was recorded having actual unscripted reactions to toys and pictures
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Music
- The entire genre of children's choirs and boychoirs — probably the best known are Vienna Boys' Choir, the Choir of Kings College Cambridge, and Libera — showcases children's high treble voices. Such choirs largely got their start in the Middle Ages when women weren't permitted to sing in church, so the treble parts in choral music were given to boys. Naturally, once the singers' voices cracked, they were retired from the treble section.
- Because anyone can make one, there are UTAU voice banks recorded by kids. Notably Kasane Teto's voice provider was only fifteen when she recorded Teto's first voice bank. (Teto herself is technically supposed to be 31.)
- The voice provider for the Vocaloid voice bank Oliver was a 13-year-old boy, and the voice provider for Kaai Yuki was a grade school-aged girl.
Theater
- Both 13 and the recent revival of Bye Bye Birdie had real teens playing the teen characters. Ditto for certain stage productions of High School Musical, notably those by real high school theatre departments.
- Dear Evan Hansen made headlines for casting 16-year-old Andrew Barth Feldman in the highly demanding role of the 17-year-old title character. (The first person to play the role was 23 year old Ben Platt, who won a Tony award for his performance.)
- The cast of Newsies. Neil Patrick Harris made a joke at the Tonys about the "hyper-acrobatic 35-year-old 15-year-olds" in the show.
- Amy Nuttall was 16 when playing Christine in The Phantom of the Opera on the West End, and to date is the youngest leading actress ever featured in the London production. Christine is almost always played by an actress in her mid-to-late 20s, because most younger singers don't have the training needed for the demanding numbers.
- The 1991 Broadway production of The Secret Garden cast then 11-year-old Daisy Eagan, the youngest female recipient of a Tony Award, as 10-year-old Mary Lennox.
Video Games
- The Adventures of Willy Beamish: Willy Beamish was voiced by Michael Zibelman, and it's his only acting credit.
- In Bravely Default, Victoria F. Stein is a mage with the appearance of a child. Fittingly, she's voiced in Japanese by Kanon Tani, who was an actual child at the time of recording. On the other hand, the English dub avoids this by having her English voice provided by Carrie Savage.
- In The ClueFinders games, actual children voice all the characters. This makes it a little jarring in The Incredible Toy Store Adventure when they're suddenly voiced by completely different people, as the previous voice actors no longer sounded like children who were ten and eleven.
- In Detroit: Become Human, nine-year-olds Emma and Alice are voiced and portrayed by child actress Audrey Boustani, who was around the same age as her characters, as her sole acting credit.
- Disco Elysium: Little Lily is described as "barely four or five years old", and her Final Cut voice actor Honor Davis-Pye was about 11 during production.
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy, The Onion Knight, a Kid Hero who's explicitly the youngest of the heroes (which puts him at fifteen or younger) was voiced by 19-year-old Aaron Spann. He also had previously voiced Joshua in The World Ends with You, who's fifteen at least in appearance.
- Final Fantasy XII: The 12-year old Prince Larsa is voiced by Johnny McKeown in English, who was 15 when the game released.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: The Puppet / Charlotte Emily was murdered by William Afton as a child. In Ultimate Custom Night, she is voiced by Reagan Rundus, who was 10 years old when she recorded her lines.
- 10-year-old Atreus from God of War (PS4) is voiced by the then 13-year-old Sunny Suljic. The sequel, God of War Ragnarök, is set three years later, with Suljic's voice deepening in the time between games and Atreus now visibly older to match.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- In Kingdom Hearts I, fourteen-year-old Sora was voiced by 14-year-old actor Haley Joel Osment. When Kingdom Hearts II was released five years later, Osment's voice had deepened, but Sora also had aged enough between games to justify the lower pitch. All in all, a rare VA example of both actor and character experiencing a puberty voice change. However, while Re:Chain of Memories takes place right where the first game ends, it came out after Kingdom Hearts II. Osment still voiced Sora in this game and sounds pretty much the same as he did in KHII, thus sounding too deep to many players.
- The late Hayden Panettiere was almost 13 when she voiced 14-year-old Kairi in Kingdom Hearts and 16 when she voiced 15-year-old Kairi in Kingdom Hearts II. The former is a rare example of a child actor being even younger than the character they're voicing.
- Physically 14/15-year-old Xion was appropriately voiced by a then 15-year-old Alyson Stoner In Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Stoner returned to voice her in her other appearances as well as replacing Panettiere as Kairi in Kingdom Hearts III.
- League of Legends: When Nunu and Willump got their visual and gameplay update in 2018, Nunu was recast to child actor Lucas Jaye, who was 11 when he recorded for Nunu.
- Life is Strange:
- 9-year-old Daniel Diaz from Life Is Strange 2 is voiced by Roman George, who was in his early teens at the time.
- Chandler Mantione, who voiced 9-year-old Chris Eriksen in both LIS2 and the side-game The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, was also close in age to his character. Amusingly, his genuine youth meant that his voice deepened noticeably in the relatively short period between recording for both games, while all of his character's scenes are meant to take place on the same day.
- In many Living Books CD-ROM games, kid characters were voiced by actual children.
- In the original Lunar game for the Sega CD, Lunar: The Silver Star, 15-year-old protagonist Alex is actually voiced by a then preteen Ashley Parker Angel. For the first remake, Silver Star Story, Working Designs, the series publisher, considered replacing Angel because he hit puberty but ended up calling him back in anyway, feeling that this "new" Alex was a bit more "grown-up" than the original.
- The first Mega Man Legends game had MegaMan Volnutt voiced by the 14-year-old Corey Sevier, but in the second game, the role was given to Susan Roman (who voiced Mayor Amelia in the first game). Cue players wondering why MegaMan suddenly sounded younger between games.
- In the Disney PC game Nightmare Ned, 10-year-old Ned Needlemeyer was voiced by then 10-year-old Courtland Mead, known for other Disney roles such as Gus Griswold from the show Recess.
- In Ni no Kuni, the 13-year-old Kid Hero Oliver is voiced by the 10-year-old Adam Wilson.
- In A Plague Tale: Innocence, 5-year-old Hugo was voiced by Logan Hannan, then 7. In the sequel A Plague Tale: Requiem, set at most a year later, Logan Hannan was 12. Still a child, but his voice had started changing and Hannan had to lean into a less natural higher range, so Hugo sounds squeakier.
- In the Japanese version of Ribbit King, the protagonist Scooter is voiced by Yousuke Kihara's 6-years-old daughter.
- Laura in Silent Hill 2 was voiced by the eight-year-old Jacquelyn Breckenridge. She wasn't told about the dark nature of the game she was voicing for, of course.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- The games originally played this trope straight with eight-year-old Tails, who was voiced by the then-teen Corey Bringas in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Shuffle and his younger brother Connor in Sonic Adventure 2. William Corkery voiced Tails in Sonic Heroes, Sonic Battle, and Sonic Advance 3, with other cast members stating Corkery was around 10 at the time he recorded his lines for Heroes. Tails has since been voiced by women from 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog on.
- This was also present in Japanese, where Tails was voiced by then 8-year-old Kazuki Hayashi in Sonic Adventure and was replaced by Atsuki Murata in Shuffle and Adventure 2. Ryō Hirohashi would assume the role starting in Heroes and is still currently voicing Tails to this day, but this convention would be briefly revisited by Classic Tails in Sonic Generations, who was instead voiced by a 12-year-old Takuto Yoshinaga.
- In addition to Tails in Heroes, William Corkery's older sister Emily Corkery provided the voice for six-year-old Charmy Bee, being about 13 at the time. He has since been voiced by adult female voice actors from Shadow the Hedgehog on; this has always been the case for him in Japanese.
- Zig-zagged in The Walking Dead: The Final Season, which is set in a former school a few years after the apocalypse, with most of the primary characters being somewhere in their teens. One of the voice actors was actually a child: 14-year old Zaire Hampton as 12-year-old Tennessee. However, the next-youngest VA was in her early twenties, and many of the others were in their thirties and forties. Notably, 5-year-old AJ (the only really young kid in the ensemble) was voiced by 25-year-old Tayla Parx.
- In the English version of Zone of the Enders, 14-year-old Leo Stenbuck was voiced by the then 14-year-old Remy Le Boeuf. In another rare VA example of an actor aging with the character, similar to the Kingdom Hearts example above with Sora, two years passed both in-universe and out between the release of the first game and its sequel, The 2nd Runner, that Le Boeuf, having gone through puberty and his voice deepened, was able to reprise his role as the now 16-year-old Leo. Interestingly enough, this was averted hard by both of Leo's Japanese actors, Hiroki Shimowada and Kenichi Suzumura, who were 24 and 28-years-old at the time of recording the role for their respective games.
Web Animation
- The Cyanide & Happiness Show: In one of the shorts, the baby was voiced by the son of Dave McElfatrick, one of the contributors to the Cyanide and Happiness strips.
- Battle for Dream Island:
- All of the contestants except for the Announcer were voiced by The Huang Twins themselves, with both starting at the age of 12.
- And in Battle for Dream Island Again, Gelatin was voiced by Graham Taylor at the age of 11.
- This series would inspire many more Object Shows to set on, with many contestants being voiced by young children.
- Theta from Red vs. Blue, while an A.I., has the personality of a child. He is voiced by J.D. Burns, the young son of series creator Burnie Burns.
Multi-Media/Other
- Lots of examples posted on this tumblr, with comparison photos of the actors when they were actually teenagers.
- In the music video for Aerosmith's song "Crazy", 17-year-old Alicia Silverstone and 16-year-old Liv Tyler play two students who skip class and go on a road trip together. The fact that this is an exception is surprising because the video is fanservice-heavy and even features Liv doing a striptease at one point. Not to mention the fact that Liv is lead singer Steven Tyler's daughter.
- Mashiro Kurata is the unique casting exception in BanG Dream!, a multimedia franchise with a cast of teenage high school girls voiced and performed in real-life live rock concerts by women in their 20's and 30's. Her actress Amane Shindou was 15 years old when the character was first introduced in the mobile game BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! in 2019.
- Incredibly, Maria Callas began her opera career at the age of 15, as the leading lady in Cavallera rusticana, which is about a young, knocked-up village girl, probably about 15-16. Since it requires performers who can sing over an orchestra, this trope doesn't have many opera exceptions, folks.
- This one is in "Other" because it derives from Theatre, Live-Action Film, and Television: Patty Duke in three separate productions of The Miracle Worker. Duke was able to play Helen Keller on Broadway well into her teens, and played her again in the 1962 film adaptation, partly because she was very small: even in adulthood she has never grown taller than five feet. Her height presented a particular challenge to the producers of the 1979 TV remake, in which she played Annie Sullivan, because she was cast opposite fifteen-year-old Melissa Gilbert — confronting audiences with a seven-year-old Helen Keller who was taller than her teacher.
- In the notorious "Friday" video, 13-year-old Rebecca Black and her real-life friends (who were presumably in the 12-14 range at the time) play characters who are at least 16, as one of them is driving a car. This has been observed and lampshaded in many parodies.
- The Full Cast Audio book recordings, which was founded by Bruce Coville, always uses age-appropriate voice actors for every book they record.
- In the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi audio drama adaptation, the toddler Wen Yuan is voiced by Yu Shuhan, who was two years old at the time of the recording.
- Inverted with JoJo in the music video to "Leave (Get Out)". She was only 13 but was pretending to be a 15-17 year-old high schooler.
- In The Nutters, the whole cast were the same age as their characters (16-17).