Double trouble: When your scene partner is yourself

Don’t worry, you’re don’t need a new prescription. You are indeed seeing double.

Two movies don’t make a trend, not yet, but there is something going on when, within a month, there are two releases in which a big name face off against themselves.

First, Robert Pattinson played reprinted versions of an expendable named Mickey in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, creating distinct iterations of the same guy, one goofy, the other more assured. Then, this week, is Robert De Niro in Alto Knights, in which he plays two different historical friends-turned-enemies gangsters.

It’s one thing to play multiple characters in the same project, that’s almost just a condensed version of what actors do, but to have to act opposite yourself and creating chemistry with an unseen double is next level.

The split screen technology has been around a long time and even in the silent film era, Buster Keaton used an in-camera technique with special lens so he could appear in the same frame multiple times in his 1921 short The Play House.

In the century since, the technology has evolved but the effect is still the same, and when it’s done well by skilled actors, we’re more than happy to suspend our disbelief.

Loads of actors, from Tom Hardy in Legend to Rachel Weisz in Dead Ringers, have pulled it off, but we particularly love these performances.

LINDSAY LOHAN

The Parent Trap was Lindsay Lohan’s coming out party, a declaration that a serious talent had arrived. Nancy Meyer’s remake of the 1961 movie featured Lindsay as separated-at-birth twins Hallie and Annie, unaware of each other’s existence until their unplanned reunion at a summer camp. There, they hatch a plot to get their shared parents back together by switching places.

It’s a super difficult performance(s) to pull off, creating enough distinction between the two but also taken on each other’s characteristics to convincingly, in universe, to fool the folks. Brava, Lindsay, brava.

PAUL RUDD

Imagine you were a little bit down in the dumps, so you end up in a mysterious kind-of-therapy who promises you a better life. Rather than be “cured” of your malaise, you discover you’ve been replaced in your life by a cloned version of you – and they’re living it better than you ever did. Oooph.

As two different versions of the same guy in Living With Yourself, Rudd not only had to bicker and spar with himself, but create enough differences, especially with the physicality, so that everyone would naturally believe that the clone was “superior”.

The show’s creator Timothy Greenberg said watching Rudd embody the “better” clone with something as simple as posture made him much more aware of his slouching habits.

TATIANA MASLANY

Ten years ago, it was rare for a cult sci-fi show to break into the mainstream Emmy Awards, which until Game of Thrones was wary of genre shows. But Tatiana Maslany was nominated three times, winning once, because you just couldn’t deny the work she did playing up to 17 different clones, although she mostly cycled through five main ones.

In Orphan Black, she created five incredibly individual clones (accents, pitch, physicality) in a show that very much made the argument that nurture trumps nature. There was street-smart and tough Sarah, unhinged but loyal Helena, high-strung housewife Alison, bookish Cosima and cold and imperious Rachel.

When any of the clones came together, Maslany created magic, and sometimes, she would play four of them in one scene.

JESSE EISENBERG

Written and directed by filmmaker and comedian Richard Ayoade, The Double was adapted from a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella, so it was always going to be surreal and weird.

In the film, he plays a downtrodden office drone named Simon, who secretly pines for a neighbour (Mia Wasikowska) and is despondent about how he’s ignored at work. When a new colleague starts at his company, Simon faints because James is his exact doppelganger, only no one else notices.

Eisenberg obviously plays both versions with one seemingly more assured than the other but by the end, it all starts to blend together. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies.

CHRISTIAN BALE

Nineteen-year-old spoiler alert, because there are people who believe you can never, ever, no matter how long it’s been, reveal a movie’s twist. Yeah, they’re insufferable.

The Prestige is about rival illusionists who are both trying to perfect a teleportation act in 19th century. Their feud spans years and ends up ruining many lives but the singular obsession consumes them, especially Hugh Jackman’s Robert Angier, who could never figure out how Albert did it.

Here it goes: Albert, played by Christian Bale, is secretly a twin, so one could disappear and the only appear. While Bale only appeared as both in the same frame right at the end of the film, he created enough differences between them that when you rewatch it, you could pick who was who.

LUPITA NYONG’O

Six-year-old spoiler alert! Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out was just as terrifying and even more bloody (ohmigod, that scene in the house of Elisabeth Moss’s character) but Us functions best as a showcase for Lupita Nyong’o.

The film is all about doppelgangers and in the world of Us, everyone has one, a subterranean version of ourselves called the “tethered”. They’re perfect copies created by the government and live in tunnels beneath the US. They were created to control the above-grounds but it didn’t work out so well so they were left to their underground prisons, a horrifying metaphor for the haves and have-nots.

When the tethered start to break onto the surface, they violently kill their OG doubles, and as both, Nyong’o is absolutely magnetic. But who even was the original…?

MIKE MYERS

Austin Powers was the ultimate spoof of James Bond and you could easily make the argument that the international man of mystery and his nemesis are two sides of the same coin. When Dr Evil sang “Just the Two of Us”, was it really about Mini-Me? Or was it about Austin? Think about it.

Mike Myers’ comedic and broad performances lean into the silly and it’s always at its most fun when Austin and Dr Evil are face-to-face, even more so than when timey-wimey shenanigans creates multiple Austins.

Completely ridiculous, but oh-so-fun.