Should you ever feel bad about confusing, say, Amy Adams and Isla Fisher, just know that even director Ron Howard mistook Jessica Chastain for his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard.
Some celebrities do their best acting when there are no cameras in sight.
Take the time Elizabeth Banks was out 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!'” the Hunger Games actress recounted to comedian Chelsea Handler while appearing on her Chelsea Lately talk show back in 2011.
But as he want on to praise her books, including 2005’s My Horizonal Life, “I was like, ‘Oh, he thinks he’s meeting Chelsea Handler,'” Banks continued. “I couldn’t ruin it for him!”
Dare we say it was a pitch-perfect response?
And should you commit a similar mix-up—like the woman who believed she spied Carrie Underwood, not Reese Witherspoon, dining out on barbecue—the odds are in your favor that the celebrity doppelgänger in question would follow suit.
Even Bryce Dallas Howard‘s own father, director Ron Howard, has gotten tripped up over how much the actress looks like Jessica Chastain, her costar in 2011’s The Help.
So while Chastain is well aware she is kind, smart and important, she’s unbothered by fans confusing her for the Jurassic World Dominion star.
Back when she first started working “off-off-off Broadway,” she recounted during a 2015 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, a group of teens approached her on the subway, asking if she was an actress.
As they began gushing about her work in the 2004 period thriller The Village, “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,” Chastain continued. “And as one does, I pretended I was Bryce.”
Of course, she’s hardly the first star to play a little make-believe. From Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel to Amy Adams and Isla Fisher, we challenge you not to do a double-take at some of these celebrity lookalikes.
Ricky Vigil M / Justin E Palmer/GC Images; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesMcKenna Grace & Kiernan Shipka
You’re not going mad(men): The Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire actress looks even more like the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star now than when she played a younger Sabrina on the Netflix series!
Writer Jamie Jirak tweeted a collage of younger-version characters Grace played, including a young Shipka/Sabrina, in 2020 and wrote, “I think about this a lot.”
Grace quote-retweeted with a crying-laughing emoji, “Same.”
Momodu Mansaray / Getty Images / Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for ABAJared Leto & Scott Disick
In a November 2023 Sirius XM interview, Leto was asked his thoughts on being compared to the Kardashians star, to which he said, “Really? Lucky me,” and after a pause, added, “Thank you.”
He also noted that if they were actually related, “Then I would have a rich relative. Because he’s very wealthy, right? Yeah, that would be nice.”
Kevin Mazur/VF15/WireImageAmy Adams & Isla Fisher
The Nocturnal Animals costars are aware of the comparison. In 2016, Fisher said on NBC’s Today show that she once pasted Adams’ face over hers for her family’s holiday card.
Getty ImagesMargot Robbie & Emma Mackey
It was no coincidence the actresses were both cast in Barbie.
“I’ve been getting told for years that I look like the girl from Sex Education, who is Emma Mackey,” Robbie told BuzzFeed in a July video. “She plays one of the Barbies in the movie pretty much because [director] Greta [Gerwig] and I thought it would be funny. We were gonna do like this whole joke about us looking similar.”
She continued, “Then once we got all dressed up as our Barbies, we were kind of like, ‘We don’t actually look that similar.” When she’s got her brown hair and I’ve got my blonde hair, we don’t look that similar. So we didn’t put that joke in the movie. But when people come up and say, ‘I loved you in Sex Education,’ I just say, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.'”
Getty ImagesMargot Robbie & Jaime Pressly
“The celebrity I am mistaken for is Margot Robbie,” the My Name Is Earl actress told Us Weekly in 2022. “It happens all the time.”
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty ImagesJessica Chastain & Bryce Dallas Howard
The Help co-stars look so alike that director Ron Howard mistook Chastain for his own daughter.
At an Apple Store, “I was, like, walking by, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s Ron Howard,'” Chastain recalled. “And then my friend was with me (and) said he turned to someone, he goes, ‘I think I just saw Bryce.’ We look so much alike.”
Bryce confirmed that the story was “legit” in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, saying her dad “was, like, shook. He really was.”
“At first he was like, ‘You really look so much alike,’ ” she said. “And I mean, obviously, I’m incredibly flattered, so it’s great.”
Vera Anderson/WireImage, Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesReese Witherspoon & Carrie Underwood
Neither celeb was upset when a social media user thought Witherspoon was Underwood.
“To the woman in the parking lot who just asked me if I was Carrie Underwood,” the Legally Blonde star tweeted, “You officially made my day.”
The Grammy winner quickly responded, “YOUR day?!?!?!?! That lady just made my whole life!”
Getty ImagesMark Ruffalo & Noah Centineo
“He’s way better-looking than I was,” Ruffalo said on the Tonight Show in March 2019. “Are you kidding me? I wish I looked like that, I swear to God.”
ShutterstockDaniel Radcliffe & Elijah Wood
Harry Potter and Frodo are well aware fans confuse them.
“Though we are both short, pale, blue-eyed and brown-haired, I would say we don’t actually look alike,” Radcliffe said in a joint interview with Empire magazine. “But the idea of us is exactly the same.”
In fact, while in Japan, Radcliffe was even asked to autograph a photo of Wood.
“So the quickest way to deal with it was to just write, ‘I am not Elijah Wood, signed Daniel Radcliffe,'” he explained, “and then hope someone translated that for him later.”
Getty Images/REX/ShutterstockSharna Burgess & Gal Gadot
The former Dancing With the Stars pro looks like Wonder Woman herself.
ShutterstockLeighton Meester and Minka Kelly
The Gossip Girl and Friday Night Lights actresses look so similar that they were cast as the leads in 2011’s The Roommate, a Single White Female-esque horror flick.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images, Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagicZach Galifianakis & Nick Offerman
The bearded stars look they may have been separated at birth.
