Famous Twins in Entertainment
Shared roles, sitcom sisters and home makeovers. From the Olsen twins sharing one role on Full House to the Sprouse brothers, Tia and Tamera Mowry and the Property Brothers, twins who lit up our screens.

Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen at the Tribeca Film Festival, 2011: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0
One baby, two actors
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were born on June 13, 1986, with Ashley two minutes older. Despite the famous resemblance they are fraternal twins, not identical ones. In 1987, when they were about six months old, they were cast as baby Michelle Tanner on the sitcom Full House. They began filming at nine months and took turns in the role, so audiences watched one little girl grow up while two sisters quietly shared the work until the show ended in 1995.
In 1993 they started their own production company, Dualstar, which made a long run of films and videos for young fans. In the mid-2000s they stepped away from acting and in 2006 founded the fashion label The Row in New York, which has since won several awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Zack, Cody and two brothers
Dylan and Cole Sprouse were born on August 4, 1992, in Arezzo, Italy, where their American parents were teaching English. Dylan is 15 minutes older. Their first major film came in 1999, the comedy Big Daddy with Adam Sandler, and a few years later they became household names as the trouble-making twins of the Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, which ran from 2005 to 2008 and continued as The Suite Life on Deck until 2011.
Both brothers then studied at New York University from 2011 to 2015. Cole went on to play Jughead Jones on Riverdale, and Dylan became a co-owner and brewmaster of a meadery in Brooklyn.
Sister, Sister
Tia and Tamera Mowry were born on July 6, 1978. They became stars in Sister, Sister, a sitcom about identical twins separated at birth who bump into each other at a Detroit mall and decide to live under one roof. The show ran for six seasons and 119 episodes, first on ABC and then on The WB, from 1994 to 1999.
The sisters later starred together in the Disney Channel movie Twitches in 2005 and its 2007 sequel, and shared their real lives in the reality series Tia & Tamera from 2011 to 2013. Before all that, they had even recorded music together in a group called Voices.
The Property Brothers
Drew and Jonathan Scott are identical twins born on April 28, 1978, in Vancouver, with Jonathan arriving four minutes ahead. On Property Brothers, Drew is the real estate expert who helps families find a fixer-upper, and Jonathan is the licensed contractor who renovates it into their dream home on a tight budget.
The roles were almost reversed. Producers first pictured Drew as the builder, then switched once they learned Jonathan held the contractor's license. The show began on Canada's W Network, was picked up by HGTV in the United States and has aired in more than 150 countries, launching a whole family of spin-offs.
- Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen at the Tribeca Film Festival, 2011: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0
Text written by Actual Twin.
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