The Twins From The Shining Don't Look Like This Anymore

In Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film "The Shining," few images are as iconic as the identical twin girls, dressed in blue, holding hands in the hallway of the haunted Overlook Hotel. The Grady girls turn up again later in the film, as murdered corpses. But while the fictional twins are forever stuck in their ghostly form, the child actors who played them are all grown up and practically unrecognizable. "They aged way better than expected," wrote one Reddit user. "They're gorgeous women. Horrifying looking children lol." Of course, it's not uncommon for child actors to change dramatically with age, like Candace Cameron Bure, who has totally transformed since her child star days.

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To this day, Lisa and Louise Burns — who were 12 when they filmed "The Shining" — are best known for their appearance in Kubrick's horror classic. The twins reportedly stepped away from acting after the movie, where Lisa became a lawyer, and Louise became a microbiologist. And though they left the entertainment business, they still regularly appear at fan conventions and have positive memories of their time on set.

"The Shining" is based on a horrifying novel by Stephen King, which is a great spooky horror book to add to your fall TBR. Still, both Burns twins say they didn't feel scared on set, and have spoken about their friendly working relationship with Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson.

In fact, they only have one lingering complaint, and it might seem a little surprising considering that, even decades later, their iconic dresses are among the most recognizable Halloween costumes. However, the Burns twins weren't fans of their characters' distinctive blue dresses. "We really hated them, they were horrible to wear and quite scratchy," Louise told the Daily Mail in 2015. "Neither of us were particularly 'girly' as kids, so they weren't our kind of clothes."

But while Louise and Lisa might have felt uncomfortable in their characters' costumes, the actors found it much easier to naturally inhabit the Grady twins' creepy vibe, and admitted to hamming it up for the camera. "We're naturally spooky!" the twins told Cosmopolitan in 2019. "But we did practice our timing — saying things in unison — and we worked on saying our lines in a hollow, other-worldly kind of way a number of times."