9 Actors Who Fooled You Into Thinking They Were Really Twins Onscreen

It’s often said that acting is reacting, which makes it especially impressive when actors portray two identical characters who interact with each other. In The Princess Switch, Vanessa Hudgens proved she could play both leading roles as Stacy DeNovo and Lady Margaret Delacourt.

In The Princess Switch: Switched Again, Hudgens took on a third lookalike role, Lady Fiona Pembrooke. With The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star out Nov. 18 on Netflix, here are eight other actors who’ve also taken on the challenge of playing multiple identical characters.

Lisa Kudrow played the lovably odd Phoebe Buffay on Friends, and she also played Phoebe’s selfish twin sister, Ursula, a recurring character. However, many fans may not realize Kudrow actually played Ursula on the sitcom Mad About You in 1993 before Friends even existed.

The world fell in love with Lindsay Lohan in 1998’s The Parent Trap, in which the 11-year-old played twin sisters, Hallie Parker and Annie James. “We discovered a big star,” said director Nancy Meyers. “We discovered somebody that everybody fell in love with.”

Nearly a decade later, Lohan took on another set of identical characters in the 2007 horror I Know Who Killed Me, playing both murder victim Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss, who claims to be her twin sister following her death.

Adam Sandler took on a dual role in 2011’s Jack and Jill, widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made despite his doubled efforts. He played twin siblings Jack and Jill Sadelstein, who must overcome their differences to collaborate on one of Jack’s work assignments.

Dove Cameron scored her first leading roles as the titular twins of Disney Channel’s Liv and Maddie, which she told Seventeen was so difficult she nearly quit after Season 1. “I was really struggling with the energy, and the workload, and shooting everything twice,” she said.

Blake Lively starred in 2018’s A Simple Favor as the wealthy, elusive Emily Nelson, whose real name — spoiler alert — is Hope McLendon. But after a dark, twisted dispute with her sister, Faith, also played by Lively, she changed her name and moved to a small town to start fresh.

James Marsden played Steve Wood, husband of Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) in Season 1 of Netflix’s Dead to Me. But following the character’s death, the series took a turn and revealed that Steve has a twin brother, Ben, also played by Marsden in Season 2.

Mark Ruffalo won an Emmy for his portrayal of twin brothers Dominick and Thomas Birdsey in HBO’s 2021 miniseries I Know This Much Is True. “We really wanted to create two separate people that were so distinctly different from each other, even though they were identical,” he said.

In Living With Yourself, Paul Rudd played Miles Elliot, who encounters his own clone after an experimental treatment. “The ultimate goal was people would be able to tell which character was onscreen,” he told THR, “knowing that the differences between the two had to be subtle.”