I turn 48 today. I am frequently told that I do not look my age. That's nice, but truthfully, the late 40s look wildly different on men. (Compare 47-year-old Wilford Brimley in 1982's The Thing to 47-year-old Ewan McGregor today.) Lots of guys look, talk, and/or carry themselves more maturely than I do, and yet they are my juniors. Here are nine of the more famous examples.
- Ted Cruz. The weaselly Junior Senator from Texas never looked a day under 55. Yet he was born on December 22, 1970, making him just 47. (Fellow failed presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are 46; notwithstanding Justin Trudeau, politics clearly ages a man.)
- Nick Offerman. The eternally middle-aged Ron Swanson is younger than me by exactly two months. You'd be forgiven for assuming that Offerman was older: his wife Megan Mullally is 59.
- Noah Wyle. I was shocked to learn that the former ER star is not yet 47. After all, ER premiered way back in 1994 – ancient history! True, Wyle played a medical student at the show's inception, but I would have sworn even then that the actor, boyish as he was, still had a few years on me.
- Andre Agassi. The tennis legend came into this world just three days after I did. By the time we were 18, I was making minimum wage as a tour guide at the Winchester Mystery House, and Agassi was a tournament champion and millionaire. At 22, I was still too shy to talk to girls, and Agassi was dating Barbra Streisand. But look at us now! Factoring in Agassi's hair loss, gray muzzle, and weight gain, it's advantage: Kines.
- Snoop Dogg. How? How is the veteran rapper/cannabis poster boy nearly a year and a half younger than me? I thought he was, like, 35 back in 1994!
- Phil Mickelson. Before Tiger Woods (born 1975), golf struck me as strictly a game for the over-40 set. So when I started hearing the name "Phil Mickelson" in the mid '90s, I figured he was already an old fart. Nope: the PGA champ was born on June 16, 1970.
- Jon Hamm. Fame came comparatively late for Jon Hamm: Mad Men made him a household name in 2007, when he was 36. Regardless, if you lined us up side by side, comparing Hamm's commanding baritone to my nasally whimper, his manly 6'2" physique to my puny 5'10" carcass, his suave maturity to my juvenile fuss, no way would you guess that I was nearly one full year his senior.
- Martin Freeman. The 46-year-old Office/Sherlock/Hobbit star has gone gray naturally, which I laud, but it does make him look a bit older, as does his hangdog mug.
- Lance Armstrong. All that outdoor bike-riding – or all that doping – makes for a leathery visage. Also, Armstrong's one of those people, like Agassi and Wyle, who seem like they should be older mainly because they've been around forever. (He turned professional in 1992; his first Tour de France win was in 1999.) Yet the lying, cheating cancer survivor is only 46.