Celebrity Lookalikes: Celebrity Doppelgangers

Though they have quite a large age gap, Bailee Madison and Maia Mitchell have been getting mixed up for years. Fans have been quick to point out their uncanny resemblance, especially after they played biological sisters on The Fosters. Though they’re not actually related, the two have had nothing but love for each other, especially when people confused them for one another. 

Mitchell wrote on social media once, “Finally met this lovely girl and apparently long lost sister, @BaileeMadison. Feeling out. You’re the best.” Meanwhile, Madison tweeted, “#NationalSiblingsDay best sister twin ever @MaiaMitchell (I just had to) see you in a few days!Xoxo @TheFostersABCF.” 

The actor-comedian and Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer are very much aware of their shocking similarities in their appearance. They even made their rivalry a whole segment on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2014, where Will Ferrell and Chad Smith dressed alike and had a drum-off. 

While it may be hard to tell Matt Bomer and Henry Cavill apart, they are in face two separate people and are not related. People first started to point out their similarities following Bomer’s American Horror Story debut in 2014. The year prior, Cavill debuted his Clark Kent in 2013’s Man of Steel.  

There’s no denying that Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley have several facial similarities. They look so much alike that Knightley actually played Portman’s double, Sabé, in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. Knightley has also admitted that she gets mistaken her fellow actress quite a lot and was even once “chased through an airport” because someone thought she was Portman. 

Sarah Hyland and Mila Kunis are aware of how much they look alike, so much so that Hyland admitted that sometimes they pretend to be each other. “She came up to me and said she gets called me all the time too,” Hyland previously told InStyle about when they first met at a party in 2010. “She said that sometimes she pretends she’s me because it makes her feel young. I asked if I could pretend to be her next time somebody asks me if I’m her, and she said OK.” 

Skarsgard’s facial similarities to Steve Buscemi are nothing new to the actor. He said during a 2019 appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that he’s heard about their resemblance since he was younger. “I had big, soulful eyes,” Skarsgård said. “I had a friend who even looked more like Steve Buscemi than I did, I thought. So, the running joke when we were growing up was, ‘No, you look like Steve Buscemi. No, you look like Steve Buscemi.’”

Skarsgard added of Buscemi, “I think he has one of the best faces in the business.”

Amy Adams and Isla Fisher are well aware of their resemblance. In 2016, Fisher even revealed on Today that she once swapped out an image of her face with Adams’ on her family’s holiday card. “I cut-and-pasted Amy Adams’s face over mine, so it was Sacha, Amy and the kids, and then we said, ‘Seasons greetings from Sacha and Isla.’ … And no one noticed,” Fisher recalled. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, your card was so cute.’ I was like, ‘It was a joke, it’s not me, it’s Amy!’“

While Adams has said she doesn’t really see their similarities, she told Vanity Fair in 2013, “I could be mistaken for a lot worse people.”

Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain have just accepted how much they look alike. The latter told Jimmy Fallon in 2015, “We did Help together and that was the first time we like grabbed each other and said, ‘Let’s look in the mirror.’ And we looked at our faces side by side and we were like, ‘Okay, we look alike.’” 

Chastain also recalled several instances where fans confused her for Dallas Howard’s roles in Jurassic World Dominion and The Village; however, she told Fallon that she typically just rolled with it. 

“I had this moment of, do I tell them that they’re wrong and it’s not me, or do I just pretend I’m Bryce,” the Molly’s Game actress said. “And as one does, I pretended I was Bryce.” 

Jennifer Connelly and Demi Moore’s dark brown hair and similar facial features really do make these two difficult to tell apart. Connelly even told Vanity Fair in 2014 that when fans come up to her on the street, they typically yell, “‘Oh! It’s Demi Moore.’ I get that all the time.” However, they are very much two different actresses, with Moore known for her roles in Ghost and G.I. Jane, and Connelly for A Beautiful Mind and Requiem for a Dream.

After years of confusion, comedian John Mulaney set the record straight in 2018 that he is, in fact, not the Flash, aka Grant Gustin. “This has been happening a lot. I’m not saying I look like The Flash,” Mulaney said on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2018. “But it’s happened enough that I need to say something. I’m not the Flash.” Gustin starred as the superhero on the hit TV series The Flash from 2014 to 2023.

Mulaney previously tweeted at the actor in 2015 after he was mistaken for Gustin at an airport. “Thanks Grant. Dubai customs asked if I was you,” he wrote. “They were super disappointed when I wasn’t.”

It’s been years and people still Zoe Saldaña for Thandie Newton. The Avatar actress told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 that even her own mother got them confused once.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Saldaña said at the time. “She saw a poster for Crash and called me to ask me why I didn’t tell her I was in a movie with Matt Dillon.”

She also shared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in 2013 that some fans even mistook her for Kerry Washington. “Sometimes I’ll just be walking down the street and I’ll have people go, ‘Hey, Thandie Newton,’” Saldaña said. “It’s like, ‘Oh my god, your show on TV is amazing, Ms. Washington.’ So it’s sort of like … it humbles you.” 

While Alicia Silverstone and Maggie Lawson’s similar facial features are undeniable, they actually aren’t related, but the Clueless star and Psych actress could definitely play twins or sisters if they wanted to.

Alan Cumming and Paul Reubens, the mastermind behind Pee-wee Herman who died in July 2023, were very aware of their similarities. The Traitors host wrote in his tribute to Reubens following his death, “When I was younger people always said I looked like Paul. When I met him he told me people always told him he looked like me. He was so kind and funny, sending hilarious themed videos every birthday and his Christmas cards were legendary and will be much missed. And his work is, and always will be, classic. A true idiosyncratic genius. I was in awe of him, and so lucky to have seen him do Pee Wee live.

Chelsea Handler and Elizabeth Banks are never surprised when someone mixes them up. The Hunger Games star said she’s even pretended to be the comedian at times.

“I was sitting in Toronto and a guy walked up to me and said, ‘Oh my god, my girlfriend loves you. She would die if I didn’t get your autograph. This is so exciting!’” Banks told Handler on her former talk show Chelsea Lately in 2011. “He’s like, ‘I just love your books. I mean, My Horizontal Life…’ I was like, ‘Oh, he thinks he’s meeting Chelsea Handler.’ I couldn’t ruin it for him!”

Setting the record straight that Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries alum, and Victoria Justice, star of Victorious, are not the same person. However, they’re well aware of their similarities, with the latter even calling Dobrev her “doppelgänger” when presenting her the award for choice TV actress, sci-fi/fantasy at the 2015 Teen Choice Awards.

“My doppelgänger, Nina Dobrev,” Justice shouted before Dobrev took to the stage.

Margot Robbie knows she shares a resemblance to Sex Education star Emma Mackey, so much so that she wanted to include it in the Barbie movie as a joke. “She plays one of the Barbies in the movie pretty much because Greta [Gerwig, director] and I thought it would be funny,” Robbie told Buzzfeed last year. “We were gonna do this whole joke about us looking similar.”

However, the joke got scrapped from the film because they realized that they didn’t look as identical as they initially thought. “Once we got all dressed up as our Barbies, we were kind of like, ‘We don’t actually look that similar,’” Robbie added. “So, we didn’t put that joke in the movie.”

Zach Braff and Dax Shepard have playfully teased each other about their similar appearance for years. In 2018, Shepard even shared a face swap photo of himself and Shepard that the latter’s wife, Kristen Bell, previously took. “Years ago @IMKristenBell took a FaceSwap picture of @daxshepard1 and I,” Braff wrote in the caption, according to People. “I’m gonna get this put on a T-shirt.”

At the time, Shepard responded, writing, “For me, it’s really the pictures in the left colomn [sic]. I mean, it almost appears that there was no swap there.”

Nope, Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly aren’t the same person, though they have starred in the same film before. The Gossip Girl star and Friday Night Lights actress played college roommates (surprisingly not twins) in 2011’s The Roommate.

Danielle Jonas and Haylie Duff may not have much in common except one thing: their facial features. Jonas is a businesswoman and married to Kevin Jonas, one-third of the Jonas Brothers, and Duff is an actress and author, as well as Hilary Duff’s older sister.

While some fans are convinced Jeremy Allen White and the late Gene Wilder are related, The Bear actor has confirmed that they are, in fact, not. “I’m not related to Gene Wilder,” White said in Buzzfeed’s “Puppy Interview” in 2023. “I think a lot of people think I am.”

However, that didn’t stop people from fancasting him for the role of Willy Wonka in 2023’s Wonka, which ultimately saw Timothée Chalamet in the titular role. Wilder played the chocolatier in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Lili Reinhart and the late Brittany Murphy’s doppelgänger status is nothing new, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking. Fans have been comparing them for years, with some suggesting Reinhart should play Murphy in a biopic. The Riverdale alum has previously acknowledged their similarities, telling Buzzfeed in 2017, “Everyone says Brittany Murphy — everyone. They think I’m her reincarnated. There are a lot of pictures of us side by side where we look crazy–alike. If you just google Lili Reinhart and Brittany Murphy, you’ll see it.”

It’s probably safe to say Carlson Young and Kate Mara get mistaken quite a bit. In 2018, the Upgraded director actually tweeted on X (known as Twitter at the time), “If i had a quarter for how many times people ask me if i’m kate mara i would be a MILLIONAIRE.”

Bella Hadid may have a blood-related sister (Gigi Hadid), but many fans believe she actually looks more similar to another celebrity: Jennifer Lawrence. And they’re not wrong, though Hadid told Seventeen in 2015 that she “never saw it” until fans kept pointing it out.

“There are some photos that it’s really weird and we look very similar,” the supermodel said. “People say it all the time. I’ll walk onto set and five people will say, ‘You know who you look like?’ and I’m like, ‘Jennifer Lawrence’? Then they’ll say, ‘How’d you know I was going to say that?’ and I’ll go, ‘Because I hear it five times a day.’”

Being incredibly talented isn’t the only thing America Ferrera and Jordin Sparks have in common. The Oscar-nominated actress and the Grammy-winning singer also share very similar facial features, including their bright smiles.

It’s pretty clear that fellow actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Javier Bardem share a similar look, with the latter telling Men’s Health in 2024 that he hears that they look alike “a lot.”

“He’s way more handsome than I am. I’m always very pleased that they say we look alike, because I think he’s very handsome,” Bardem admitted. “We haven’t met yet. I’m waiting for the day that we both will meet and say, ‘Hey, brother! How are you doing?’”