Mary-Kate and Ashley had a fan club until 2000, "Mary-Kate & Ashley's Fun Club", where fans would pay to receive Mary-Kate and Ashley collectibles and photos. Each subscription included an issue of Our Funzine, Mary-Kate and Ashley's fan club magazine, exclusively available through the club, and a collectibles catalog, where one could purchase T-shirts, posters, baseball caps, key rings, school folders, postcards, and various other items. Subscribers would also receive "surprise gifts" (usually key rings, book excerpts, or back issues of the Funzine), lyric sheets to Mary-Kate and Ashley's songs, a school folder, a membership card, a full-sized poster, two black and white photos (one of each girl), and a color photo with reprint autographs. The club was advertised at the beginning of Mary-Kate and Ashley movies until 1998.[9]
4. After Full House, the Olsens actually went on to star in two of their own TV series in addition to their uber-successful direct-to-DVD movie empire. Two Of a Kind was part of the TGIF line-up from 1998-99, though it was canceled due to low ratings.
Full movie Ashley
6. When Dualstar Entertainment Group launched in 1993, it made the then 6-year-old twins producers and owners of the production company that would release all of their 47 direct-to-DVD movies and music video series (including The Adventures Of...and You're Invited to...franchises).
During this time, they released albums, a magazine, a clothing line with Walmart, a cosmetics line, board games, video games, an animated TV series and a line of bedroom furniture. They eventually became the youngest self-made millionaires, and when they turned 18, they joined the list of the richest teenagers in the world when they took full ownership of Dualstar. Their estimated combined net worth? Around $300 million.
7. New York Minute, the twins' second theatrical release after 1995's It Takes Two, would end up being Mary-Kate and Ashley's final film together, earning a disappointing $14 million when it was released in 2004. In fact, the movie would serve as Ashley's final acting credit ever, with Mary-Kate going on to appear in the TV series Weeds before making her final on-screen turn in 2011's Beastly.
8. Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario actually grew up with the twins, revealing in an interview with Huffington Post, "I grew up across the street from them so we used to play all the time." They lost touch when the twins moved away, but randomly reconnected with Bellisario auditioned for Billboard Dad, their 1998 movie. "I showed up on set and I came out of my trailer, and they came out of their trailer and it was just like, 'What are you doing here!?'" she recalled to Buzzfeed. "It was really weird."
16. In the mid-aughts, the Olsen twins style became trend-setting and headline-making, with the New York Times infamously dubbing it "dumpster chic." They wore giant sunglasses, artfully baggy clothing, and carried Balenciaga bags bigger than they were as they attended NYU. (Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa even dressed up as the sisters for Halloween one year.)
18. Some of the big stars who previously appeared in Olsen twin movies? Will & Grace star Eric McCormack played their dad in Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, which also starred Cloris Leachman. Michael Cera had a small role in Switching Goals and The Walking Dead's Austin Nichols was her love interest in Holiday in the Sun. Plus, Megan Fox played their nemesis in Holiday in the Sun, Sex and the City's Willie Garson grilled them as a special agent in Our Lips Are Sealed, with Jason Clarke playing one of Australia-set villains...though he didn't use his real accent for some reason?
24. Before her breakout performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011, little sister Elizabeth was actually known as "Lizzie" to most early-era Olsen fans, after she appeared in some of their earlier movies, infamously being told to "B-U-T-T out" via song. Since then, Elizabeth has become one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation, joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Scarlet Witch.
"Simon Birch'' is an unabashedly sentimental tearjerker. Either you stand back and resist it, or you plunge in. There was something about its innocence and spunk that got to me, and I caved in. A lot of that had to do with how likable some of the characters are. We go to the movies for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to seek good company.
The movie takes place in 1964, in a New Hampshire town that obviously had Grandma Moses as its city planner. It's about a friendship between two boys, one a gawky pre-adolescent named Joe, the other a dwarf named Simon who believes God has chosen him for a mission in life. The opening narration reveals that two of the characters will die during the course of the movie; that softens the shock when they do and lets the entire movie play as bittersweet nostalgia. It's all framed in a flashback, as an adult Joe (Jim Carrey) revisits the scenes of his childhood in narration.
The other key characters could all be from Norman Rockwell paintings. They include Simon's loutish parents, who don't like him; the Rev. Russell (David Strathairn), the local minister; Grandma Wenteworth (Dana Ivey), Rebecca's mother; Miss Leavey (Jan Hooks), the Sunday school teacher who endures Simon's theological insights, and Ben (Oliver Platt), a man Rebecca meets on the train and brings home for supper. (The last time Rebecca met someone on the Boston & Maine, her mother recalls, she came home pregnant.) Simon and Joe occupy a world of their own, swimming and boating and slipping invisibly around town. Simon's dwarfism doesn't prevent him from going everywhere and doing everything, and even taking his turn at bat in a Little League game; when he finally does gets a hit, there are tragic consequences. Simon uses his size as a license to say exactly what he thinks on all occasions, loudly and clearly, as when the Rev. Russell is asking God's help for a fund-raiser, and Simon stands up on his pew to announce, "I doubt if God is interested in our church activities. If God has made the bake sale a priority, we're all in a lot of trouble.'' All of this is a scene-raiser for the melodramatic climax, in which it appears that God has perhaps indeed made Simon a priority. There are people who will find Simon's big scene contrived and cornball but, as I said, it all depends on the state of mind you assign to the picture. I've been seeing a lot of silent films lately, in which incredibly melodramatic developments are a way of life: What matters is not that they're unlikely or sentimental, but that the movie presents them with sincerity and finds the right tone.
The movie's a directorial debut for Mark Steven Johnson, author of the "Grumpy Old Men'' movies. He seems to know his way around small towns and broad emotions. His story was "suggested'' by the novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany'' by John Irving, unread by me, although no doubt much more complex and ambiguous; Johnson goes for a purity of tone that children may identify with as much as adults.
Many of the scenes depend on the screen presence of Ian Michael Smith, making his movie debut with a refreshing brashness. Working with the more experienced Joseph Mazzello ("Radio Flyer,'' "Jurassic Park''), he projects the confidence of a very bright small boy who has been the center of attention for a long time and has learned to deal with it. By surrounding the boys with very nice people (the Ashley Judd and Oliver Platt characters) and not so nice people (the minister, the teacher), Johnson creates a film so direct and engaging that cynicism wilts in its sunny spirit.
Identical twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley spent much of the '90s known as America's sweethearts, launching their own multimedia franchise that spans movies, books, and clothing lines. They even established their own production company, Dualstar, making them among the wealthiest women in the entertainment industry.
Yet another ABC TV movie, How the West Was Fun follows the girls from Philadelphia to the dude ranch of their deceased mother's godmother out west. Once there, they are tasked with saving the ranch from developers who want to turn it into a theme park.
Watching High School Musical is basically a rite of passage for kids at this point. The 2006 Disney Channel movie became a lasting pop-cultural touchstone for both millennials and Gen Z upon its premiere, spawning two sequels in the following years. But one Wildcat legacy may not discover the power of Sharpay Evans until later in life, because Ashley Tisdale said she won't watch High School Musical with her daughter once she's born.
Tisdale announced her first pregnancy back in September by posting some cute photos with her husband, Chris French. A month later, she revealed she's expecting a baby girl. At the start of 2021, Tisdale got real about preparing to welcome her daughter to the world, including speculating on when she thinks her daughter can meet her well-known alter-ego, Sharpay. Tisdale revealed in an interview with People that she isn't a fan of watching her own movies and shows, so she can't picture herself turning on High School Musical to watch with her kid.
"Personally, I don't watch my own stuff," Tisdale said. "My husband has hardly seen anything that I'm in. I think I just showed him High School Musical this year, and we've been married six years at this point. And that wasn't even the full movie."
Tisdale clarified that she isn't going to go out of her way to keep her daughter from watching the movie, but she feels it would be too strange to sit down and show her a completely different side of herself. "I'm not going to be like, 'Don't watch it.' I just don't know if that's something... I look completely different. It feels like a different lifetime!" she said.
The twin sister team of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen is undoubtedly one of the most well-known of our time. The Olsen Twins were the 90s and early-2000s' powerhouses in the child / pre-teen entertainment industry. After winning the hearts of television audiences as the infant Michelle on Full House, when they were just six months old, the two went on to act in various films as kids and eventually teenagers. In reality, the "Mary-Kate and Ashley" films essentially developed into a separate genre. They starred in movies including It Takes Two, Holiday in the Sun, When in Rome, and New York Minute, which is presumably where you might have seen them. As fans will remember, Ashley typically played the more feminine, sweeter roles while Mary-Kate typically played the sporty, tom-boy ones. 2ff7e9595c
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