Movie stars have been working overtime so far in 2025, playing dual roles in a number of projects. The latest addition, in Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending vampire film Sinners, is Michael B Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack, whose personality distinctions are amplified by red and blue colour-coding. He is hot on the heels of Robert Pattinson confronting a reprinted version of himself in Bong Joon Ho’s playful and dystopian sci-fi Mickey 17. Elsewhere, Robert De Niro portrayed rival mob bosses in The Alto Knights, and Theo James had a blast as both a good and an evil twin in horror comedy The Monkey.
One actor playing multiple roles goes back to early cinema, however recent technological developments mean that, while success used to live and die on techniques applied during a film shoot – with double-exposure capturing differently styled versions of, say, Douglas Fairbanks or Mary Pickford – emphasis has now shifted to post-production, where digital tools are implemented to sell a trick vision.
