12 Actors Who Played Their Own Twin On Screen

Find out which actors portrayed their own twin…

In Tom Hardy’s film Legend, he portrayed real-life Mafioso brothers, Reginald “Reggie” and Ronald “Ronnie” Kray. Looking back Tom says slipping between the characters was “pretty easy” but it was more challenging to make the audience “believe it wasn’t one performer doing both parts.” Thankfully, Tom had the help of a body double, who took part in many scenes — including the fight between the brothers.

“Whatever I laid down in the morning, I had to literally follow in the afternoon with the other character. The brother-fight is a perfect example of where we had to really be aware that, whenever I interfered with my brother’s face [in the morning, in] the afternoon I had to return that interference, and interfere back into his face,” Tom told EW.

He continued, “You realize that, if I’m playing Reggie at the top of the day, and I’m slapping Ron, Reggie’s got rings on, I’m going to have to go back in, and shoot the Ron side of it. If I’ve thrown a hard slap as Reggie, then I’m going to receive as Ron, a hard slap from Reggie. I’m getting twice the beating — and so is [the body double] Jacob.”

Blake Lively played her own twin sister in A Simple Favor, a secret which wasn’t revealed until late in the film. While Blake portrays a woman named Emily Nelson, it turns out that she was actually a con artist named Hope McLanden. Hope was born as a set of triplets but only she and her sister Faith survived. As teenagers, they burned down their family’s home and killed their abusive father — and then separated in order to evade the law.

In one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s earlier roles in The Man in the Iron Mask, he played twins King Louis XIV and Philippe Bourbon. In the 1998 film, based on Alexandre Dumas’s The d’Artagnan Romances, Leo played both the king as well as his brother who was imprisoned and subjected to remaining hidden behind an iron mask.

Mark Ruffalo took on the roles of twins Thomas and Dominick Birdsey in I Know This Much Is True. He put great effort into separating the two roles, gaining 30 lbs. to play Thomas, a choice he made to reflect how his character was impacted by medication for his schizophrenia. In order to do so, he filmed all of Dominick’s scenes in the first 15 weeks of filming and then took five weeks to transform into Thomas.

“We didn’t want it to be like I run and throw a wig on and do the same scene in the same day, so we took six weeks off to really separate these two guys,” Mark shared during the TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour.

He continued, “And Thomas is on medication, mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics. A lot of people put on weight. Those five weeks were really kind of lonely. Putting on the weight for Thomas was really challenging. I didn’t expect it to be. I thought I was going to have a fun time doing that, but when you’re force-feeding yourself, some of the romance of food sort of leaves.”

Armie Hammer played real-life twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in 2010’s The Social Network. Initially, he was cast alongside actor Josh Pence in the role but just a week into production, it was decided that the twins needed to look identical and only Armie would be used in the film. Josh stayed on as a body double — and sometimes even had clips of his body used with his face replaced by CGI.

“I would always start it as Cameron, and Josh would play Tyler. We would shoot it until [David] Fincher was happy, and then he’d say, ‘Okay, switch.’ Then I would go change clothes, change my hair, and then use that time to sort of change character,” Armie told The Wrap.

He continued, “And then I’d sit where Josh was seated, and everybody else would leave set. The set would vacate, and we’d put the camera on an automatic system. They’d put a piece of tape on this wall — that piece of tape is your brother, this tennis ball over there is Larry Summers, put this thing in your ear. And in the earwig would be an audio take of myself playing Cameron.”

Rachel Weisz portrayed both Beverly and Elliot Mantle in Dead Ringers, based on the 1988 psychological thriller. Reflecting on the experience, Rachel says the experience was a bit “mind-bending” when she physically had to transform from one character to another.

“We learned to start with Elliot; she sets the pace because she’s faster, and she’s bossy. I would work with my scene partner, Kitty Hawthorne. She would say Beverly’s lines [and I would be Elliot], and then I would go to hair and makeup and [change] costumes and become Beverly. She would sit on the other side of the screen as Elliot, but she [didn’t] speak,” she told THR.

She continued, “I had an earwig in my ear of the lines that I’d laid down as Elliot. I would hear myself as Elliot in my ear, and respond as Beverly while looking at Kitty. I had the other twin in my ear as I was being the other twin. They will sit inside each other all the time. It was a learning process and challenging. I was stretched way beyond the limit of what I thought was possible.

Troian Bellisario portrayed Spencer Hastings on Pretty Little Liars for seven years before it was revealed that she had an evil long-lost twin named Alex Drake who grew up in England. Troian took on both roles — and things even got a little more confusing as she, for a time, portrayed Alex pretending to be Spencer. Looking back, Troian says she put a lot of work into differentiating the characters and working on Alex’s accent.

“Alex is so fast and so quipped and she’s really colorful, but if you notice there’s a lot of tension around her mouth, so even when she’s impersonating Spencer, I really wanted to kind of have her struggling with that exact kind of freedom in the American accent. There’s just a lot of tension around her American accent and literally sort of a stiff upper lip,” Troian told ET.

She added, “I was really worried that there wasn’t going to be enough of a distinction between them, but I was really happy to look back and sort of be like, ‘Yup!’ I can totally see the differences, particularly in the finale, where I’m like, ‘Yup that’s Alex and that’s Spencer.’”

Lisa Kudrow played twin sisters Phoebe and Ursula Buffay on Friends and also portrayed twins in Mad About You. The idea to make the two characters twins stemmed from the two shows being on the same network in consecutive time blocks. Lisa was already appearing on Mad About You when she was cast on Friends and executives believed that viewers needed an explanation as to why the same actress was appearing on two different shows.

“I think everybody realized, ‘Well then we need some explanation for the audience, like why you’re seeing the same girl with the same voice at 8 o’clock and at 8:30 on two different shows.’ We need an explanation,” she told Emmy TV Legends.

In 2011, Adam Sandler hilariously portrayed twin siblings in the film Jack and Jill. Adam donned a wig and shaved his body to get into character as Jill — but really didn’t change too much about his appearance.

“We’d shoot Adam as Jack. Then he’d go and get made up as Jill; we’d relight the set and we’d have to make sure that the lighting was right for where Adam would be standing as Jill. Adam would come in and we’d give him a little earbud, so he could hear his performance as Jack, which he’d just done. We had a monitor set up so he could see what Jack was doing,” director of photography Dean Cundey shared.

Lindsay Lohan became iconic for her breakthrough role in The Parent Trap, where she played long-lost twins Hallie and Annie. Lindsay, who was just a preteen at the time, pulled off the roles so well that she had the cast and crew confused. Disney CEO Michael Eisner even thought Lindsay had a twin sister who starred in the film with her.

“At the premiere, Michael Eisner, who was at Disney at the time, he said, ‘Where’s your twin?’ … I was like, ‘I don’t have a twin. You should have paid me double!’ I will never forget that. I actually said that!” Lindsay recalled on The Drew Barrymore Show.

Janelle Monaé took on the role of twins Andi and Helen Brand in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery — and also portrayed Helen as she impersonated Andi. While Janelle says she was “nervous” about taking on the dual role, she says she really enjoyed taking part in such a big twist in the film.

“I wasn’t just playing Helen or just Andi. I was playing Helen pretending to be Andi before the audience knew it, and then Helen pretending to be Andi after the audience knew it. So I had to keep, like, three to four notebooks with just Helen’s lines and these lines: ‘Helen Pretending to be Andi,’ that was helpful for me,” Janelle told Them.

She continued, “So there were days when I showed up and they were like, ‘From 9 to 12, we need you to be Helen. From 12 to 2, we need you to be Helen pretending to be Andi.’ It was great precision, but it was one of my biggest jobs when it came to playing these multiple characters. And it was a fun, big job at that.”

Back in 2009, Edward Norton played twins Bill and Brady Kincaid in Leaves of Grass. Looking back, he says playing two different characters was one of the main reasons he signed on for the film. He added that going between roles wasn’t difficult but he did struggle with remembering all his lines well enough to “make it feel real.”

“I was excited by the challenge of actually playing two roles. How do you make it feel like these two characters are in the same space together in a way that doesn’t feel like an obvious trick?” Edward told NY Daily News.

He continued, “If the two characters are in a scene together, it all had to be done on the same day. Going from one to the other wasn’t tough. The hard part was remembering both sides well enough that I could make it feel real. How do you have them overlapping, interrupting and doing all the things that make up real conversation? The characters are so different, but it helped that they are also twins. So their physical gestures are supposed to be similar.”