When I see a family portrayed in a television show or movie, I often notice that the putative family members don’t resemble each other in the slightest. No doubt this is because casting directors choose actors more for their acting talents and suitability for a particular role than for their physical resemblance to the other actors. (I’m aware that not all family members in real life resemble each other, but I’m sure we can all agree that most people at least somewhat resemble their close relatives.)
What are some examples of television and movie families where there is actually a plausible family resemblance between the actors? (To simplify things, let’s ignore the case where the actors themselves share a blood relation.) And in such examples, is the resemblance purely coincidental, or did the casting directors deliberately seek out actors who resembled each other?
The only example that springs to my mind is the striking resemblance between actors Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce, who played brothers in the sitcom Frasier.
Six Feet Under. Frances Conroy and Lauren Ambrose played mother and daughter, and I always thought they looked like they were actually related. Peter Krause and Michael C. Hall played brothers, and they had a certain resemblance, too.
How about Vicki Lawrence and Carol Burnett from the latter’s self-titled show? (Although perhaps that’s cheating, as the resemblance is the whole reason that Vicki Lawrence was hired.)
I don’t think it’s cheating; in the example I gave in my OP, I’m pretty sure David Hyde Pierce got the role at least partially because of his resemblance to Kelsey Grammer.
Reese Witherspoon and Dina Waters in Just Like Heaven. Regardless of what you think about the movie, those two actresses really looked like they could be sisters.
Small Wonder’s not a well-respected show (and for good reason), but the actors who played the father and son (Dick Christie and Jerry Supiran, respectively) looked enough alike that one time when I was watching it as a kid, my mother asked me if the two were actually father and son.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire from that movie they were in…Brothers, I think it was called?
But maybe it doesn’t count since for years people talked about how alike they look…in fact, Gyllenhaal was “on deck” to replace Tobey in Spider-Man 3 since Tobey originally said he didn’t want to do it because he felt he injured himself filming Spider-Man 2.
The most striking example of two people who bear no resemblance to each other being cast as family members I can think of is Kenneth Branagh’s film of Much Ado About Nothing, which cast Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington as half-brothers. (Don John and Don Pedro, respectively.)
I think the kids in Brady Bunch all looked like siblings – that is, the boys all looked like brothers of each other and the girls looked like sisters of each other. I’m trying to think of other families on TV where they look alike, but I’m not coming up with much else.
I thought that they did a pretty good job in the show Grounded for Life, the two boys looked like each other and the older girl looked like she could be from Donal Logue and Megan Pryce. I thought they were pretty far off the mark with Donal and Kevin Corrigan being brothers, but that would be a case where the actors were hired for the characters they could play.
In a similar case, in the most recent incarnation of Dr Who and his companion, the little girl playing little Amelia Pond and the older actress playing grown-up Amelia Pond looked amazingly alike, and it later turned out when the two were chatting backstage, that they were actually related to each other - cousins or something. The casting people didn’t know that.
I’ll believe you, but your version seems a little odd - how would she know to recommend her young cousin for a role if they hadn’t actually met? How would she know the cousin would look/act appropriately?
The two of them not meeting doesn’t mean their families are out of contact, so, it’s easy enough to imagine Gillen’s parents saying to her ‘you know, Karen, your cousin, Caitlin is a dead ringer for you at that age’, then later ‘did you hear, Karen, young Caitlin has gotten interested in acting’…
It’s also pretty easy to imagine that when she noticed that the script involved a younger version of her character, she’d go to the casting folks ‘Have you cast young Amy yet? Well, I’ve a cousin that they say looks a lot like me, and is interested in acting, so why not give her a read?’
