Strange Facts About The Olsen Twins' Childhood

If you were alive during the '90s, there's a pretty good chance you've seen the smiling faces of Mary-Kate and Ashley a.k.a. the Olsen twins. But behind those smiles were two young girls thrust into the Hollywood industry before they even learned to walk. Thanks to literally growing up in front of TV audiences on the hit sitcom Full House, the twins were able to leverage their fame into a direct-to-video empire before a brief stint as tabloid fixtures and a box-office bomb made them flee from the spotlight. So let's take a look back at the Olsen twins' journey from tiny entertainment powerhouses to reclusive fashion designers who really don't want to relive their early days on Full House.

Considering the fact that they were barely alive for an entire year, it shouldn't have been a surprise that the baby actresses weren't total professionals. But apparently John Stamos missed that memo and reportedly had the twins fired. Or in his words, removed from the set, according to Entertainment Weekly.

"It's sort of true that the Olsen twins cried a lot," Stamos said. "It was very difficult to get the shot. So I [gesturing], 'Get them out...!' That is actually 100 percent accurate. They brought in a couple of unattractive redheaded kids. We tried that for a while and that didn't work. [Producers] were like, all right, get the Olsen twins back. And that's the story."

Gee, we can't imagine why the twins didn't jump at the chance to star in the Netflix spin-off Fuller House when Stamos came calling.

By the show's fourth season in 1991, the Olsen twins were far and away the stars of Full House, according to a Washington Post profile that same year. At only four and a half years old, Mary-Kate and Ashley had already achieved a level of fame that rivaled seasoned professionals. "Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations/TVQ, the Port Washington, N.Y., measurer of national popularity, gives the twins an appeal rating of 48, just below Cosby's 53 and above Steven Spielberg's 45." Have mercy!

But what was the source of the twins' appeal? WaPo education columnist Jay Matthews attempted to break it down. "There was a political dimension to this. As in many families with children, control of the channel changer in the early evening hours was tightly held by the family's youngest member. Kate Mathews, only 21 months older than the twins, saw them as spokeswomen for her needs and fears, and made life miserable for anyone who dared switch to a baseball game or the news."

However, if Lifetime's The Unauthorized Full House Story is to believed, the Olsen twins' fame did not sit well with stars Stamos, Bob Saget, and Dave Coulier and caused friction on set, according to the Chicago Tribune. But that pales in comparison to what the twins' success reportedly did to their parents' marriage.

In a 2010 interview with Marie Claire, Mary-Kate spoke candidly about her early acting career that started almost the moment she was born. And in a notable turn from Olsen twin interviews during their teen years, she doesn't look back on the experience fondly. In fact, Mary-Kate refers to her time in front of the camera with her sister as "little monkey performers." Yikes.

"I look at old photos of me, and I don't feel connected to them at all." Mary-Kate said. "I would never wish my upbringing on anyone."

Mary-Kate's regretful feelings about her acting days could explain why the twins' younger sister Lizzie, now better known as Marvel actress Elizabeth Olsen, stopped appearing in the twins' movies when she was only 10 and focused on school instead of becoming a child actor, according to the San Francisco Gate. Even more telling, not even two years later, the cracks in the Olsen twins' smiling public facade would become too large to hide after their first attempt at a feature film crashed and burned.

A year before New York Minute would prompt the Olsen twins to walk away from acting, they sat down with Rolling Stone and denied increasing tabloid rumors about their partying, Mary-Kate's anorexia, and their now infamous love for cigarettes. All of which turned out to be true. But the girls were still on their tail-end of promoting their squeaky clean image, so they made some choice remarks about other celebrities that did not age well.

"The girls freely admit they're not the Hilton sisters," writes Rolling Stone. "They don't smoke or drink. 'We don't, but I'm not one to judge,' says Mary-Kate. And they are adamant that they're not going to have a Tara Reid-style freakout in years to come."

Awkward. Because it wouldn't be long before the girls were hitting the party scene as hard as Paris Hilton and Tara Reid, according to People. "Both sisters soon left NYU — and became better known as bizarrely garbed fashionistas with a penchant for dancing on nightclub tables and subsisting on cigarettes, sweets and Starbucks lattes." A source close to the twins put it more bluntly. "They both changed a lot; they got real crazy. ... They definitely started going a little bit hardcore."

Thanks in no small part to opportunists like Pratt, tabloid fever for the Olsen twins was already at a fevered pitch. But the situation snapped into overdrive as they neared their 18th birthday in June 2004 and several websites went so far to host countdowns to the twins turning "legal."

"Even with the competition of Ronald Reagan's funeral and that dog that can fetch objects by name, everyone from wacky morning DJs to big city news-gathering organizations were falling over themselves to spread the news," reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "'Lock up the boyfriend,' a New York Post article announced on the twins' birthday. 'The Olsen twins are legal—and they're loaded.'"

Pretty gross, right? But not only was the twins' 18th birthday marred by the pervy social norms of the time, the two wouldn't even spend the momentous occasion together as the media soon learned that Mary-Kate's long-rumored battle with anorexia had reached a breaking point.

After spending their teen years worrying about opportunists like Pratt profiting off of their private lives, it only makes sense that that the twins would have trouble letting people get close to them. But their demeanor became known as especially frosty when Heath Ledger overdosed while "casually dating" Mary-Kate. In fact, Access Hollywood reports Mary-Kate was the first person Ledger's massage therapist called after discovering his body, which raised a few eyebrows. But not even two days later, the twins would already be spotted clubbing in Manhattan, according to People, who spoke to sources that painted the Olsen twins as extremely closed off.

"They are cold," a friend told the magazine. "They're not mean like Paris or Lindsay, but they are really only close to their boyfriends and each other. They're kind of emotionally uninterested in friends. We aren't talking about normal people here."

And things would get even shadier when the feds started poking around Ledger's death.

While most of the Full House cast remained close, the Olsen twins' refusal to take part in the Netflix spin-off Fuller House exposed their animosity with their TV family. "The rest of them have remained a family since the show ended, but no one can really tolerate Mary Kate or Ashley. Everyone kind of knew that this would happen though," a source told Radar Online. "Those girls stole the show as Michelle Tanner. But their egos exploded once they turned old enough to realize how famous they were when they were just babies."

Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky on the show, shared her own opinion with Access Hollywood on the Olsen twins' lack of interest in a reunion. "It doesn't matter how much money they get paid, they don't care."

To put a point on how disinterested the Olsen twins are in revisiting their past, E! Online reports, that their publicists have been told to insist that they're referred to individually and not as the Olsen twins. Whoops! Sorry, Olsen... people?