Armie Hammer plays twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in David Fincher’s new movie The Social Network. We take a look at other great actors who had onscreen doppelg
David Fincher is the man who put Brad Pitt’s face onto a baby in Benjamin Button but in new movie The Social Network he goes one better and uses one actor to play two different roles. Armie Hammer plays twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to perfection. His performance makes it impossible to tell which twin is which by just their mannerisms. The different way he moves, his vocal range and facial expressions makes it so easy to believe that these were two different people on the screen.
This got us thinking, which other actors have freaked us out by playing twins on the big screen?
Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers
The tagline for Dead Ringers tells us that ‘Separation can be a terrifying thing’, but Jeremy Irons playing identical twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle is equally as scary. The Mantle twins take advantage of the fact that no-one can tell them apart in this 1988 film by David Cronenberg, and frequently pretend to be each other. Of course, this doesn’t last, and when Beverly falls in love with a woman who hates his brother the Mantle twins are driven apart and their self-professed ‘one soul’ is wrenched in two.
Nicolas Cage in Adaptation
Adaptation is the kind of bizarre film that we have come to expect from Being John Malkovich writer, Charlie Kaufman. Cage plays Kaufman himself (see, told you it was weird) as he struggles to adapt a book into a screenplay. Cage also plays Charlie’s twin brother Donald. Still with us? Cage played two very different characters in Charlie and Donald; Charlie was introverted, self-critical and nervous and Donald was the complete opposite – the kind of person that everything comes easy to. Cage’s performance as the Kaufman twins earned him an Academy Award nomination and helped audiences forget about the horrendous Gone in Sixty Seconds.
Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap
Remember when Lindsay Lohan was young and the world seemed full of her potential as an actress? Seems a long time ago now, but La Lohan played fresh-faced twins who were separated at birth and hatch a plot to get their divorced parents back together, in this remake of the 1961 film of the same name. Lohan manages to play both twins well and serves to remind us that she – sometimes – can be a pretty decent actress.
Matt Lucas as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland
Yes, there was a lot of CGI inn Alice in Wonderland, but that didn’t diminish the giggles raised by Matt Lucas’s bickering Tweedle twins. Lucas’s twins were not as zany as the pair portrayed in the 1951 animated film, but, for the short time they were on screen, they were fun nonetheless.
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask
Teenage girls squealed in joy at the thought of having two Leo’s all to themselves but DiCaprio’s follow up to Titanic was – pardon the pun – a titanic failure. Although the film is not as bad as first reviews implied, this adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s famous novel is not without it’s flaws. DiCaprio’s portrayal of the bratty King and his twin brother is not fantastic, but add some swashbuckling from the Three Musketeers – Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Gerard Depardieu – and the film goes from dire, to not that bad… Even though the Musketeers all have very different accents.
Bill Bailey in Hot Fuzz
Many fans did not realise that Bill Bailey was actually playing twins in Hot Fuzz until the very end when both were on screen together. There were a couple of clues throughout the film, however. One is reading ‘Complicity’ by Iain Banks and the other reads books by Iain M. Banks (same author, different styles of fiction) and of course… The hair. Fans were delighted to see Bill Bailey on the big screen, and even more delighted when it was revealed that there were two of him!
Honourable mentions go to Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger and Bette Davis who played twins in A Stolen Life and again in Dead Ringer (no relation to the Jeremy Irons movie)
Words – Brogen Hayes
THE SOCIAL NETWORK is now showing in Irish cinemas