No height difference BL

 Yebles:

Ooops! Sorry for the misunderstanding? What were you referring to? Is that another drama (I have not heard about! LOL)?

Primarily older playing younger, like early 20s playing high school students. But also Moonlight Chicken were Jim describes himself as nearly 40, Wen as almost 30, and  Gaipa and Leng are something like 30 and 32. And First is very much a 30 year old banker =D

Outside of BL, top prize goes to a brilliant gentle lakorn, Bussaba Lui Fai.  FL lead was around 10 years older than her character while the ML was 41 when it aired - his character was said to be 22 through most of it. There were moments when the impact of how young he was to be going through all of that was reduced, but mostly Toni was so good at inhabiting his young character it didn't matter.

 Yebles:

I also always wondered if an actor can have chemistry with different acting partners.

Of course they can. Look at Ohm Pawat. Off Jumpol outside of BL (Girl Next Room, Midnight Motel, Astrophile), or First Kanaphan. Was going to say his early roles before he shipped, but he was great with Mix in their flashbacks in Moonlight Chicken. He is one who is very much stagnating because of the ship focus IMO.

 Yebles:

There have not been many BL actors who made the transition to more mainstream dramas (i.e. lakorns)

I think that's at least as much a product of the channel system as anything else - who they sign with early shapes their future. More a factor of the bulk of BL being siloed production. Film Thanapat and Jam Rachata are signed with one31 so it's no big deal for them to do a one31 lakorn or series with gay mains too. (Not sure if Ch3 has any originally produced BL, it mostly airs those from other production companies.)

As far as I can tell, it's more of a GMMTV thing than BL. (With the small BL production companies, a few might get lucky but in general they're not going to move many of their actors on.) The GMMTV OGs who would naturally be expected to move on, maybe they're content with their work - several of them are getting a variety of roles within GMMTV even if New is the only one who does much elsewhere (AFAIK). It probably makes sense for the younger ones to stay on with main roles as long as they can rather than leave and try to work their way up through support in one of the mainstream channels.

We might see more cross over as they get older - Ohm Pawat is still only 25 =D - and MONOMAX may prove a useful vehicle outside the channel system. I'm often surprised by who I see listed for their titles (even if I can't find a way to legally watch them ::lolsob::)