Genealogy, Hollywood-style

From Steve Harvey in the Los Angeles Times:

I read that Frances Fisher plays the mother of Julianne Moore in the movie “Laws of Attraction,” though she is just eight years older than Moore.

This kind of weird parenting is a tradition in the movies:

Paul Newman was actually three years younger than Jo Van Fleet, the woman who played his mother, in “Cool Hand Luke.”

In “The Manchurian Candidate,” Laurence Harvey was the son of Angela Lansbury, who would have been 3 when she gave birth.

Dustin Hoffman was the son of Sean Connery, seven years older, in “Family Business” and the son of William Daniels, 10 years his senior, in “The Graduate.”

And Anne Bancroft, the “older” woman who was Hoffman’s mistress in “The Graduate,” would have been just six grades ahead of Hoffman in school.

Most remarkable, perhaps, was Jessie Royce Landis portraying Cary Grant’s mother in “North by Northwest,” though she was actually 10 months younger than Grant. Perhaps this was the inspiration for the movie “Back to the Future.”