16 Bombshell Actresses Who Filmed Two Roles At Once (And No One Realized)
Though we may not always realize it, actors are brutally hard workers who have to endure long hours and run off of little to no sleep. Sure, some of us assume that celebrities live the glamorous life and sleep in all day and party all night, but that's not the case. They have to maintain a rigorous schedule when on a movie set. And we're not even going to mention the fact that they have to prep for MONTHS before a project even begins (you know, depending on the project itself) and that prep work can often take a toll on their personal lives.
And all that is just prepping for one particular role in a film. But what if the person in question is taking on TWO roles at the same time in the same film?
There's possibly only a handful of working A-list actors in the industry who are able to pull this off without a hitch and are able to successfully fool audiences into believing that one of the characters is actually played by a completely different actor altogether. Believe it or not, these 16 beautiful women actually ended up accomplishing that in the long run. Some of them also had audiences believing that they even had a real-life twin (if the film was made back in the day).
Allow us to take a bit to marvel at these amazing, bombshell actresses who managed to pull off the impossible.
16 Halle Berry as Jocasta Ayrs and Luisa Rey in Cloud Atlas
The daring film Cloud Atlas not only spans of millions of years, but the entire cast was presented with the challenge of playing multiple, and hardly recognizable, characters who are all connected in some shape or form. Screen siren Halle Berry not only played a reporter by the name of Luisa Rey, but she also played the white wife of another character in a different timeline. When asked about how she felt about the movie itself in an interview with Viva Press, Berry was at a loss for words. “It would be impossible to explain what I really feel or think about the film,” she said. “It exists on so many different levels. On one level, the most basic, it explores the consequences of human actions over the course of several centuries and hundreds of generations.” The movie really does hit a lot of different emotional cords.
15 Meg Ryan as the Graynamore Sisters and Dede in Joe Versus the Volcano
Meg Ryan was American's ultimate sweetheart back in the 1990's thanks to her adoring charm and her undeniable chemistry with actor and all-the-time co-star Tom Hanks. They were constantly paired up together, from Sleepless in Seattle (where they only shared the screen for a few minutes in the entire movie) to You've Got Mail. But most don't remember that they originally starred in the romantic comedy Joe Versus the Volcano. The story is about a man who finds out he's dying of an incurable disease and decides to end it all by jumping into a volcano in the South Pacific after a hefty financial offer is presented to him to do so. The man ends up falling in love with the woman taking him there, played by Meg Ryan. Ryan also plays the girl's sister along with a former co-worker of the man.
14 Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart and Tess in Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Amy Adams is one of the most recognizable faces in modern cinema today. A few years back, Adams starred in the sequel to Night at the Museum - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian where she played both Tess (the love interest of Ben Stiller's lead character) AND famous pilot Amelia Earhart. “We wanted to capture the spirit of adventure, and Amelia does have that,” Adams told Syfywire of her performance. “She's somebody who can hold her own in a man's world, so I did take that [from her]. But they wrote such a fun and spunky character that it such a foil to Ben, so I followed the script and I followed the history and put them together into what is Amelia Earhart in the film.” We can rightfully say that Amy will continue to impress for years to come.
13 Michelle Williams as Glinda the Good Witch and Annie in Oz the Great and Powerful
The millennial generation is familiar with the dynamically talented Michelle Williams from her Dawson's Creek days. But these days, the young actress is trailblazing her way quietly throughout Hollywood. One of her more recent parts was taking on the role of Glinda The Good Witch in the fantasy film Oz, the Great and Powerful. Williams was adamant about playing the role differently from Billie Burke's famous portrayal back in the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. “So I don't have to do a Billie Burke imitation,” Williams said to the Orlando Sentinel back in 2011 after she was cast in the role. “I'm playing a younger Glinda, so I'm not bound by Billie Burke's performance. I don't get to say, 'Toto, too!' Thank goodness!”. Williams also played Annie, the love of Oz's life (played by James Franco) in the film.
12 Bae Doona as Sonmi 451 and Tilda in Cloud Atlas
Like her co-stars in Cloud Atlas, Korean actress Doona Bae takes an ambitious leap and plays multiple characters in the film. She plays the genetically-engineered Sonmi-451 who rebels against her creators after falling in love. She also plays a white woman in the 1800's who falls in love with Jim Sturgess' character (the actor who also happens to play Sonmi's love interest as well). Out of all the characters she played, Bae took best to Sonmi's innocent nature the best. “I like Sonmi because she has both purity and innocence and at the same time she's got such a strength,” she told Movieline.com in an interview about the movie. Apparently, the actress didn't even study the script before playing the part. “I just emptied myself and felt Sonmi, let her into my heart.” Seemed to work out perfectly for her.
11 Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling and Pam in Grindhouse
Actress Rose McGowan first enchanted audiences when she played the loveable tease in 1996's hit horror movie Scream, and she only appeared to age backward with each passing movie and television show. In 2007, she starred in the double feature Grindhouse, written, produced, and directed by both Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and starred McGowan, Josh Brolin, Naveen Andrews, Fergie, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, and Kurt Russell (and that's just to name a few). In the first feature titled Planet Terror, McGowan played Cherry Darling finds herself in the wrong place at the right time after she decides to quit her low-paying job. In the second feature named Death Proof which is about a stalker to follows seven women, McGowan appears momentarily as a woman named Pam.
10 Christina Applegate as Julia Malfete and Princess Rosaline in Just Visiting
Remakes can sometimes be a massive hit, or it can be a downright flop. In the case of Just Visiting, which was a remake of the French hit film Les Visiteurs, it happened to be the latter of the two. The 2001 movie was about a medieval knight who travels to 21st century Chicago and meets the descendant of the princess he was supposed to marry (but instead accidentally killed). Actress Christina Applegate played both Princess Rosaline, the princess who was tragically poisoned by her own fiancé, and Julia Malfete, a museum worker who meets the knight on during his time travel. While the original film was a hit international success, the American remake was a disastrous flop, which really didn't matter to Applegate since her career had been an extremely successful one, and continued to be even after the film flopped.
9 Patricia Arquette as Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield in Lost Highway
Patricia Arquette happens to be a part of family Hollywood royalty (siblings are Rosanna, Richmond, Alexis, and David Arquette - all actors) and, yet, managed to fly under the radar for many years. She made her acting debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and starred in films like Ed Wood, True Romance, and the hit television show Medium. In 1997, Arquette starred in David Lynch's neo-noir film Lost Highway, a cult-classic about a man who suddenly switches lives after he's convicted in the death of another person. Arquette plays the man's wife Renee and then Alice, a woman he falls for while living his second life. Like most of David Lynch's work, the film is utterly complex and a mind twister of the best sort.
8 Susan Sarandon as Abbess and Ursula in Cloud Atlas
In the movie Cloud Atlas, a handful of actors played many different roles in the film. The film was done by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings and they snagged an all-star cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, and Academy Award-winning Susan Sarandon. Sarandon played a number of characters in the film and was nervous to do so. “I was kind of scared to jump in there so fast,” she told Indie Wire. “Everyone was putting on new noses. I never wore contacts before! But then when I got there, it was just the bravest kind of Cirque De Soleil atmosphere. People were just jumping from one trapeze to the next. I thought, yeah, this is what filmmaking should be like -just a rollicking good time with everyone working way beyond their comfort zone.”
7 Julia Roberts as Tess Ocean and Julia Roberts in Ocean's 12
It's one thing to play a completely different character in a film, but it's another thing entirely to play YOURSELF in a film that has, well, nothing to do with you. This was the case for Julia Roberts, who played Tess Ocean in the Ocean's Eleven franchise. In the first, she plays the estranged wife of famous thief Danny Ocean (played by George Clooney) who ends up back with her husband by the end of the movie. But in Ocean's Twelve, Roberts plays both Tess AND her real-life self when Tess has to pose as Julia Roberts in order to help her husband steal a famous artifact. Of course, she's found out by Bruce Willis (playing Bruce Willis), who discovers that Tess isn't left handed (Julia IS). It's a very interesting scene and Roberts manages to pull it off with a certain amount of charm and charisma.
6 Julie Christie as Mildred Montag and Clarisse McClellan in Fahrenheit 451
Many of us were assigned to read the chilling Ray Bradbury dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 back when we were seniors in high school. The book is about a future where books are outlawed and firemen only exist to burn books found and arrest the people who harbor them secretly. The main character is a fireman named Guy Montag who begins to question his job after he meets a teenage girl by the name of Clarisse McClellan who is a free-thinker. Actress Julie Christie not only played Clarisse in the film adaptation of the book but also Guy's wife Mildred Montag as well. A remake of the film is scheduled to be released by HBO in May with Michael B. Jordan playing Guy and Sofia Boutella playing Clarisse along with Laura Harrier as Mildred.
5 Marion Cotillard as Marie and Luie in Pretty Things
If you don't know who actress Marion Cotillard is, you're truly missing out. The French actress starred in numerous American films such as Big Fish and Inception and was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, which she ended up winning. But before that, she starred in the French drama film Pretty Things (Les Jolies Choses) where she plays twins of opposite characters named Lucie and Marie. Thanks to her portrayal of the characters, Cotillard was nominated for a Cesar Award for Most Promising Actress and Hollywood took notice of the talented young actress. From there, she moved on to Los Angles and starred with Billy Crudup, Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, and Jessica Lange in Big Fish.
4 Bette Davis as Margaret DeLora and Edith Phillips in Dead Ringer
Actress Bette Davis was the original Hollywood ungettable get when it came to actresses. Little do people know, however, is that Davis actually played in TWO movies where she played twin sisters (during an era where that wasn't too normal) - once in the 1946 film A Stolen Life and again in 1964's thriller Dead Ringer. In the latter, Davis plays Margaret DeLorca, a wealthy widow who happens to meet her twin poor twin sister Edith Phillips at the funeral of her husband. The movie was a success thanks to cinematographer Ernest Haller, who actually worked on A Stolen Life as well and had managed to perfect his trick shots over the years. A lot of credit actually goes to makeup artist Gene Hibbs as well, who helped make Davis look younger in the film itself.
3 Hayley Mills as Susan Evers and Sharon McKendrick in The Parent Trap
This is was the original double take. Sure, one actor playing multiple roles had been a thing in Hollywood well before the 1961 hit Disney movie The Parent Trap, but they had not been as obvious (or most as popular) than when actress Hayley Mills played estranged twins Susan Evers and Sharon McKendrick. The movies is about two twins, separated at birth by their divorced parents, who accidentally meet up at summer camp and switch places in an elaborate plan to get the parents (played by Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara) back together again. The film was remade in 1998 with Lindsey Lohan in the starring role (Lohan changed it up a bit and gave one of her characters a British accent, which she pulled off flawlessly).
2 Margaret Hamilton as The Wicked Witch of the West and Almria Gulch in The Wizard of Oz
She was the original trailblazer who set the bar extremely high for actresses playing dual roles in a film. Margaret Hamilton played the original Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz. What seems to escape most people's attention was that Hamilton also played the evil neighbor of Dorothy Gale and her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry Almria Gulch. After Dorothy's dog Toto bites Almria, the cranky neighbor attempts to force Dorothy to put her beloved dog down. After Almria arrives with the sheriff to collect Toto, Dorothy runs away with her dog. As the story goes, Dorothy hallucinates that she and Toto are swept away in a tornado and arrive in the land of Oz where she embarks on an adventure to take down the Wicked Witch of the West.
1 Emma Thompson as Margaret and Grace in Dead Again
Like most movies starring former married couple Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, the storyline in the film Dead Again is a complex one. Thompson plays both Margaret Strauss, a woman who mysteriously ends up dead in 1949 and Grace, a woman who has visions of Margaret's life 40 years after the fact. The idea is that both Thompson and Branagh's characters keep coming together in life after life as if they were soul mates. Not oddly enough, the two actors were married in real life in 1987 and collaborated on many films together, such as Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing. They were even dubbed the “golden couple” by British media. Unfortunately, the marriage came to an end in 1995 when the two separated.
