Celebrity Mothers Who Look Exactly Like Their Daughters
Kids typically look like their parents. That's just how genetics work. How many times have you been told that you have your dad's eyes or your mom's nose? Probably a lot. But sometimes, you can really look like your parents, especially if they don't age (hello, Reese Witherspoon). But for these celebrity mother-daughter combos, it seems like one of them was 3D printed, because the resemblance is so uncanny you wonder if it's science-fiction instead of biology.
Whether it be Hollywood red carpet events or throwback social media photos, we're inundated with A-list parent-and-child duos who could pass for twins. What's more, a lot of these mini doppelgängers follow in their mothers' career footsteps, too, which concentrates the similarities between them as they grow up and sometimes become stars in their own right. So sit back, do a double-take, and let's see a few celebrity mothers and daughters who are totally twinning. Sorry, famous dads. We'll get to you later.
Kaia Gerber takes after her supermodel mom in many ways
Was there a magazine in existence in the 80s and 90s that didn't have Cindy Crawford's face on the cover at some point? One of the most famous supermodels ever, the 5'9" beauty appears to have discovered cloning, because her face also appears on her daughter, Kaia Gerber. According to Yahoo! Lifestyle, Kaia was born in 2001 to Cindy and businessman Rande Gerber, and Kaia is the spitting image of her famous mom. Don't believe us? Check out the side-by-side photo (below) of her throwback high school picture along her daughter's one in 2017 Crawford shared on Instagram. We're seeing double, people.
And with those genetics, it's no wonder Gerber went into the family business. She's modeled for Vogue and walked the runway for such iconic brands like Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander Wang. She even has a higher social media engagement than her legacy kid model peers Kendall Jenner and Bella and Gigi Hadid. "If anyone had a point of reference, I definitely did and one of the best ones," Gerber told Vogue about her legendary mother. "For me [modeling] wasn't a foreign world to go into and I felt like I understood it. I knew what I was kind of getting into."
Lisa Bonet's mini-me is her biggest fan
What do you do when your parents are Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz? Do you try to be cooler than them or realize they're your parents and just give up? It has to be tough. Luckily, Zoe Kravitz is the spitting image of her mother and has inherited her acting chops as well. Whether it be on the small screen in HBO's Big Little Lies or studio blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road and The Batman, Kravitz is now a star in her own right.
In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Zoe opened up about her relationship with her 80s icon mom. "She always tells me I saved her life," Zoë said, adding, "She didn't intend on being famous, but then she became this sensation, and she was so young and really private. So moving away, being with her child — she really responds well to stillness and privacy." She says her rocker dad wasn't "absent," he was just busy working and touring, so she only got to see him a few times a year. "My mom gave up everything for me, and I kind of took that for granted; and then my dad gets to stroll into town, and he's the hero," Zoe explained. "I look back and really feel for her in that situation."
Uma Thurman gave Maya Hawke some great genetics and great advice
If you watched Season Three of Stranger Things and thought, "Wow, that actress Maya Hawke sure does look familiar," you were correct. Not because you had seen her in anything, but rather, because you probably know of her parents, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, the latter of whom she looks exactly like. Maya told WSJ Magazine that having famous actor parents has its advantages. "I'm always running decisions by them," she said. "Hopefully, it'll keep me from making some mistakes that young actors can make."
Naturally, some of those decisions were career-based, which led to her breakout role in the hit Netflix series. Maya told Who What Wear in 2019 just how pivotal her mom was to that success. "My mom has been giving me advice on how to act on that set or any set through a process of leading by example and showing me what it means to be a productive collaborator on set, a good worker, kind person, a good listener," she revealed. "I've gotten to watch her work my whole life so, you know, it wasn't like she gave me a couple coins of advice. I got to watch her my whole life, and so I have had wonderful teachers."
Bette Midler's daughter is her twin. Period.
Now there's looking like your mom; then there's Sophie Von Haselberg. The daughter of music and film legend Bette Midler and artist Martin von Haselberg, Sophie looks like her father's genes were blocked at the door. Just look at the photo. Did Bette Midler time travel to pose with her younger self, or did young Bette Midler time travel to pose with her older self? Time travel is confusing.
Sophie is not just Bette's daughter; however, she's forging her acting career with roles in HBO's Wizard of Lies and Netflix's House of Cards. During a 2017 interview with InStyle, she discussed how her iconic mother helped shape her career. "My mom has always pushed me, as an artist, to create my own work, and not just to do the projects that other people involve me in, which I think is a really good thing," she explained. "Trust me, I am very happy to be an actor in somebody else's project any other day of the week. But I also think for the purpose of longevity and being an artist with your own voice, it's really important to make work that I, myself, am passionate about, and that I'm the driving force behind."
Kate Hudson not only looks like her mom, she learned a lot from her, too
Did we even have to include this one? Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson being spitting images of each other should be common knowledge by now. Well, if it's not, we're here to say it should be. Because, wow. They're twins. Hawn has millions of fans around the world due to her legendary work during a career that has spanned over five decades. But her biggest fan is her daughter. "I have this stunning, iconic mother. I have a grounded, aspiring, and philanthropist mother. She is not just a talent and crazy and gorgeous and beautiful. She is truly an inspiring mother," Hudson said (via Us Weekly). "I can only hope that, as a mother, I can live up to that."
Hudson, who was a child of divorce, thanks her mother's example for teaching her how to co-parent with the three fathers of her three children. "I think the one thing that I learned from my mom is that no matter what you're feeling and no matter what — when I see my friends talking (expletive) about their ex-spouses in front of their kids, I get so upset because they don't recognize how much that affects their child and how resentful their child will become of them," Hudson said (via USA Today). "No matter what, I never heard a bad word about my father."
Nico Parker inherited her mom's looks and fierceness
Thandie Newton plays an android in Westworld, but we didn't know HBO had so much money that could start cloning her. We don't know how else to explain her daughter, Nico Parker. The resemblance is uncanny. And much like her talented mother, Parker is now acting. Her first significant role came in Tim Burton's Dumbo in 2019. "She's definitely taking her own path but yeah, she's acting," Newton told Ryan Seacrest at the Golden Globes in 2019 (via People). "She was 12 when she made Dumbo, the live-action movie that's been beautifully directed by Tim Burton. She's now 14 — the movie has obviously taken a couple of years, because of CGI and so on." Newton added, "It's absolutely breathtaking. I'm so thrilled for her."
However, Parker isn't here for her parent's advice "When it came to acting, I didn't really want advice," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was very much my own experience." Her father, writer-director Ol Parker, taped her audition for the live-action remake, and she used a stuffed polar bear as a stand-in for the iconic Disney circus elephant. But the memory of the admittedly adorable-sounding audition somehow isn't a positive one for Nico. "The fact that it's out there, that someone has it on, like, a computer somewhere, is horrifying," she said. "Just thinking about it now makes me upset." Here's a tip for mom and dad: maybe don't roll that out at the Sweet Sixteen.
There is one thing Dakota Johnson and Melanie Griffith don't have in common
Suspiria actress Dakota Johnson comes from a long line of Hollywood heavyweights. The Birds star Tippi Hedren is her grandmother! Miami Vice's Don Johnson is her dad! But the strongest genes she received were those of her mother, actress Melanie Griffith. Although the Working Girl actress loves her daughter's taste in men — She told People in September 2019 that Johnson and her boyfriend, Colplay frontman Chris Martin, "are an awesome couple" — she's not a huge fan of her movie choices.
While on the red carpet for the 2015 Oscars, Griffith admitted she had yet to see her daughter's biggest movie to date, Fifty Shades of Grey. Due to the risqué nature of the film, Griffith said watching it "would be strange" to experience. "She's a really good actress," Griffith told ABC's Lara Spencer when asked about the film. "I don't need to see [Fifty Shades] to know how good she is." It then got super awkward. "Alright! You don't have to see it," Johnson replied before turning from the camera and mouthing what looked like phrase Griffith probably heard a lot of when Johnson was a moody teenager. Griffith just stood there and smiled, amplifying the tension. "I'm like, 'You can see it!' and you're just like, 'No,'" Johnson added. Yikes.
Christie Brinkley's look-a-like daughter even fills in for her professionally
In the 70s and 80s there was no escaping Christie Brinkley. From Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers to appearances iconic movies and music videos, the blonde beauty was a fixture in pop culture. After her high-profile marriage to Billy Joel dissolved, Brinkley married architect Peter Cook and gave birth to Sailor Lee Brinkley Cook in 1998. Now, over 20 years later, Sailor has grown up to be her mother's twin. Not only did she replace her mom on Dancing With The Stars after Christie suffered an injury, Sailor also followed her mother's footsteps and went into modeling.
However, having household name supermodel as a mother didn't work wonders for her self-esteem. "I grew up very insecure," Sailor told Us. "I grew up very doubtful of myself in a lot of ways and I went into modeling, which is, like, not — I don't want to say that — it's the most challenging thing to take on as someone who is quite insecure." She added that having a famous mother "definitely" added to that pressure. "Anyone who does something that their parents did before them feels that pressure," she explained.
Mamie Gummer is in no rush to be the next Meryl Streep
Mamie Gummer, the daughter of screen legend Meryl Streep and sculptor Don Gummer, looks exactly like her famous mom. But being the daughter of perhaps the most celebrated actress of our time, one would think Mamie would avoid acting at all costs to avoid the inevitable comparisons. However, according to the Daily News, Mamie says she will "ride the elephant in the room" and forge her own acting career. And with roles in such critically-acclaimed projects like True Detective, Castle Rock, and The Good Wife, Mamie is doing just that. But still, she's not rushing things. "I always sort of anticipated that I was going to hit my stride in my 30s," Mamie told the outlet in 2015, when she was 32.
Can anyone blame her for taking the time to soak up the free master class that came in the form of just existing around Meryl Streep every day? "Well, I've been watching her my whole life," Mamie told The Telegraph. "Not just how she acts— if she has a secret to her success, she hasn't passed that on — but how she behaves and interacts with the world; like any kid does with a parent."
Reese Witherspoon and Ava Phillipe share a smile, but not life goals
All of the mother-daughter combos on this list look alike, but Reese Witherspoon and Ava Phillippe legitimately look like twins. Surprisingly, Phillippe hasn't caught the acting bug from her movie star parents (her dad is Ryan Phillippe), instead choosing to enroll at UC Berkeley to pursue higher education. However, despite not following in her mother's footsteps, Ava credits her mother for being an inspiration and a role model.
"This is the gorgeous woman who taught me about the power of graciousness, love, ambition, and hard work," she captioned a July 2019 Instagram post. "She inspires me everyday to live with gratitude for the life I've been given and compassion for others. I'm thinking about her a little extra today, that's all." Apparently, random expressions of love are also something that's been passed down. On Ava's 20th birthday, her Oscar-winning mother shared a similarly touching message on her own Instagram. "Watching your little girl grow into a gorgeous, thoughtful, compassionate, fun-loving young woman defies words. It has got to be the greatest gift I could ever receive. I love you @avaphillippe to the moon, around the stars and back! Happy 20th!" Witherspoon wrote.
Gwyneth Paltrow's doppelganger daughter has very strict social media rules
If you're looking for the doppelgangers on this list, look no further than Gwyneth Paltrow and Apple Martin. The oldest child of the Iron Man star and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, Apple isn't in the public eye all that often, but her mom can't help being a mom who gushes over her kid. "Happy 15th birthday my angel @applemartin I will never be able to put into words how much I love you. You are so strong and so good and so damn funny and sooooo gorgeous inside and out. I am the proudest mama ever. Feliz quinceañera mi vida!" the Oscar-winner wrote on Instagram.
But like most moms, Gwyneth can be a bit embarrassing. Sometimes she posts selfies without approval. To wit: when the Shakespeare In Love star took to Instagram to share a sweet photo of herself and Apple on the slopes, Apple commented (via The Guardian), "Mom we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent." To which Paltrow replied, "You can't even see your face!" Oh, mom!
Demi Moore and Rumer Willis have the ability to twin out, hard
Right now, you may be thinking, "Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch." But we promise you, under the right circumstances, Rumer Willis, the first child of Demi Moore and Pulp Fiction star Bruce Willis looks exactly like her mom.
See? No, you aren't seeing double. That's really Rumer and Demi. The resemblance is uncanny, right? Oh, and Rumer also happens to be an accomplished actor and singer in her own right — not to mention a big fan of her legendary mom.
As a guest on The Talk, Willis said she was "proud" of mother's vulnerability in Moore's 2019 memoir Inside Out. The G.I. Jane star didn't hold back in the candid book, detailing her troubled upbringing, addiction, and issues in her marriage with Ashton Kutcher. "I think so many women have watched her, and just as her daughter, I've watched her, as this kind of beacon of strength and this kind of leader," said about her famous mother. Of the memoir, she said, "What I really respect about her is that she is never the victim in her story. She takes accountability. She takes responsibility, and mind you, this is her perspective, her story, and she's the first one to say that."