For years, fans may have assumed the same actor was playing both Jimmy Olsen in Smallville and Iceman in X-Men when they were in fact watching two different people entirely: identical twins Aaron and Shawn Ashmore.
Born in 1979 in Richmond, British Columbia, twins Aaron and Shawn Ashmore started their careers by acting in commercials after a talent agent approached their mother.
According to Shawn, casting directors sometimes couldn’t choose between them, so they’d settle it with a coin toss – right in front of both boys, explaining they liked them both equally, so to keep things fair (and avoid hurt feelings), so a coin flip seemed the fairest.
Both opted for similar genres
Despite the somewhat brutal method of dividing the roles as kids, both brothers went on to have solid, separate careers. Shawn became known for playing Iceman in the X-Men films, along with roles in The Rookie and The Following. Aaron, meanwhile, played Jimmy Olsen in Smallville, plus roles in Warehouse 13 and Killjoys.
Since both leaned into sci-fi, superhero, and genre television, it’s easy to see why fans blurred the two together over the years.
Even recent viewers got confused
Even today, the confusion hasn’t fully gone away. When Aaron appeared in a recent season of Ginny & Georgia, plenty of fans of The Rookie assumed they were watching Shawn.
One Reddit user wrote, “This whole time I thought I was watching Shawn Ashmore from The Rookie!” Another admitted, “I literally just found out that Gil (Aaron) has a twin. I thought he was on The Rookie and Ginny and Georgie.” A third chimed in, “I knew there were twins but I always thought The Rookie guy was Gil omg.”
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