What’s better than one of your favourite actors starring in a new movie? Multiple versions of the same actor in the one movie!
Such is the case with Mickey 17, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s new sci-fi flick, starring Robert Pattinson as lowly corporate grunt Mickey, who works himself to death, only to regenerate as a brand new worker afterwards. However, something goes awry, and Mickey is soon battling another version of himself for survival.
Mickey 17 is part of a long history of movies where there are clones of a character, or the one actor plays several roles at once, all requiring a beloved thespian to act alongside their favourite actor: themselves.
To mark the movie’s release, let’s take a look at some of our favourite movies where actors came face to face with…[dramatic music] themselves.
Nicholas Cage (Adaptation and Face/Off):
It stands to reason that an actor as…eccentric as Cage would play multiple versions of himself in movies. In Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002), he gives arguably his best performance(s) to date as identical twins, the self-loathing screenwriter Charlie and his more assertive brother Donald. But if you want a true gonzo Cage/Off, you need to watch John Woo’s outrageously entertaining Face/Off (1997), where Cage not only plays terrorist Caster Troy, but also Nicholas Cage playing John Travolta’s character, FBI agent Sean Archer.
Lindsay Lohan (The Parent Trap):
Ask this writer on a good day and I’ll argue Lohan’s double performance in this 1998 Disney remake might be the best child performance of all time. A then 12-year-old LiLo is sensational as long-lost twins Hallie and Annie. In one way or another, Lohan is in just about every scene in the film and creates two utterly distinct characters. She’s truly a Lohan to behold.
Jake Gyllenhaal (Enemy):
Two Jake Gyllenhaals at the same time…but enough about my romantic fantasies. In this little-seen 2013 thriller, Jake plays a college professor who becomes obsessed with an actor who looks the exact same as him. Sadly, the title The Two Jakes was already taken.
Jeremy Irons (Dead Ringers):
West Cork-peach-coloured-Kilcoe Castle-owner Irons gives one of his greatest set of performances in this 1988 David Cronenberg thriller. Jeremy plays identical gynaecologists, who use their likeness to take advantage of women. A truly squeamish and disturbing thriller, it was recently remade into a TV miniseries with Rachel Weisz in the twin roles.
Lupita Nyong’o (Us):
In Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror, Lupita Nyong’o gives two phenomenal performances as the terrorised mother Adelaide and her “tethered” underground doppelganger ‘Red’. Nearly all of the cast (including Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss) play other versions of themselves too, but it’s Nyong’o’s dual turn – especially as the raspy-voiced Red – that anchors the whole thing.
Mike Myers (Austin Powers franchise):
Myers was already a cult favourite comedian from the Wayne’s World movies in the early ‘90s, but it was his multiple performances as Austin Powers/Dr Evil/Fat B*stard/Goldmember that really propelled him to superstardom. Watching Myers play against himself as superspy Austin and pinkie-chewing, cat-stroking baddie Dr Evil never stops being fun.
Janelle Monáe (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery):
Singer-actress Monáe has [SPOILER ALERT] the two most pivotal roles in the Knives Out sequel, playing a woman impersonating her sister and then playing herself later on. It’s a brilliant performance that somehow manages to totally upstage the hamminess all around her from the likes of Daniel Craig, Edward Norton and Kate Hudson.
Eddie Murphy (Coming To America and The Nutty Professor):
Murphy has acted alongside himself quite a few times, such as in the Coming To America (1988) barbershop scene, but in The Nutty Professor, he plays seven characters in total, including most of the members of his own family (the dinner sequence with Murphy playing the family is a real highlight).
Armie Hammer (The Social Network):
Hammer cannibalises (sorry) the screen in his dual role as the Winklevoss twins, the guys that accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for Facebook. The strapping Hammer is perfectly cast as the wannabe Olympian rowers, capturing their brawn and brains as they go up against Jesse Eisenberg’s weaselly Zuckerberg.
John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich):
In one of the bravest and most inventive star turns in film history, Malkovich plays himself and then the versions of himself from when different people (including John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener) enter his mind through the mysterious portal. The trippiest bit is when Malkovich enters his own mind and everyone in his external world ends up looking like him, and can only say “Malkovich” over and over. Tbh, I reckon that’s how most movie stars encounter the world around them.
Michael J Fox (Back To The Future Part 2 and 3)
The increasingly ambitious BTTF sequels saw Fox take on multiple roles, playing different iterations of his past and future families. In Part 2, he plays his own future son and daughter, as well as trying to avoid running into himself from the first movie in 1955 (shoutout too to Thomas F. Wilson as the young and old Biff Tannens). In Part 3, Fox acts alongside himself playing Marty’s Irish frontier relative, Seamus McFly. Only Michael J Fox could be forgiven and loved for an Irish accent that bad.
Tom Hardy (Legend):
In this 2015 crime drama, Hardy plays the real-life twin brothers Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Personally, I’d have called the movie Kray-Kray, but what do I know?
MICKEY 17 is at Irish cinemas from March 7th