In Hollywood, connections are everything. If you don't personally know a few industry professionals, know people who know industry professionals, or know someone who is related to an industry professional, it's a tricky business to break into. Since Hollywood is a town where having a phone book-sized list of connections is the norm, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many actors end up marrying other actors or having kids that become actors. There has been much debate over babies born from nepotism, which is understandable considering the great advantages they have by being the children of celebrities. Still, even celebrities want to raise children, and they will just like the rest of us.
Many parents and children have worked together in Hollywood over the years. Parents have directed their children, children have directed their parents, and they have of course starred alongside each other. Hollywood has bred many parent and child acting duos, such as Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson or Kirk and Michael Douglas, but not all of them have worked together. Even the duos that have worked together have not necessarily acted together. We know that many fathers and sons have acted together, such as Will and Jaden Smith, but there are also many mothers and daughters who have acted together as well. Here are ten mother-and-daughter duos who have shared the screen together in movies:
10 Melanie Griffith & Dakota Johnson - Crazy in Alabama (1999)
Long before she was Anastasia Steele and even before she was a Golden Globe girl, Dakota Johnson made her acting debut in the 1999 dramedy, Crazy in Alabama. She starred alongside her famous mother Melanie Griffith, and clearly the acting bug stuck. The movie centers around a woman named Lucile who escapes her abusive husband and flees to Hollywood to pursue her dreams of TV stardom. However, that leaves her nephew Peejoe alone in the backwoods of Alabama where he gets an education in grown-up matters like freedom. Johnson played one of Lucile's daughters alongside her half-sister Stella Banderas, daughter of Antonio Banderas, who also directed the movie.
Rent it on Amazon Prime or Apple TV
9 Uma Thurman & Maya Hawke - The Kill Room (2023)
The Kill Room
- Release Date
- September 29, 2023
- Director
- Nicol Paone
- Cast
- Samuel L. Jackson, Maya Hawke, Uma Thurman, Joe Manganiello, Debi Mazar, Mike Doyle
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Thriller
It's no secret that Stranger Things star Maya Hawke has two mega-famous parents, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. She worked under her father's direction in the film Wildcat where she stars as writer Flannery O'Connor. She also worked with her mother in the movie The Kill Room, this time starring alongside her famous parent. The film follows a hitman, his boss, an art dealer, and the money laundering scheme that accidentally turns the assassin into an overnight art sensation. Thurman plays the art dealer, Patrice, while Hawke plays Grace, one of the many people entangled with the criminal trio.
8 Demi Moore & Rumer Willis - Now and Then (1995), Striptease (1996)
Actress Rumer Willis also has two extremely famous parents. Her father is action icon Bruce Willis, and her mother is Demi Moore. The mother-daughter duo have starred in two films together, the first was Now and Then in 1995. The movie centers around a group of four 30-something friends whose lives have gone very differently. At a reunion, the four women reminisce on a particularly eventful summer when they were 12. Demi Moore played adult Samantha, while Rumer Willis played Samantha's younger sister when they were kids. A year later, the pair played mother and daughter in Striptease, about a single mother and stripper who blackmails a congressman in the hopes of regaining custody of her daughter.
Rent Now and Then on Prime Video, Stream Striptease on Showtime or Paramount+
7 Kyra Sedgwick & Sosie Bacon - Loverboy (2005)
Loverboy
- Release Date
- January 24, 2005
- Director
- Kevin Bacon
- Cast
- Kyra Sedgwick, Dominic Scott Kay, Kevin Bacon, Blair Brown, Matt Dillon, Oliver Platt
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Drama
Daughter of one of the most wholesome Hollywood couples, Sosie Bacon has started to make a name for herself in this business, especially after starring in the horror hit Smile in 2022. Being Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick's kid has some perks, and one of them was getting to act with her mom in the 2005 film Loverboy. It centers around Sedgwick's character Emily, a formerly neglected daughter who becomes a possessive mother to her son, whom she calls Loverboy. Sosie played Emily as a child in the scenes where she retells her journey to motherhood to her son. In addition to acting in the same movie as her mother, Sosie was able to direct under the direction of her dad in the movie.
Stream it on Tubi
6 Carrie Fisher & Billie Lourd - The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy (2015, 2017, 2019)
Billie Lourd comes from a line of strong women in Hollywood. Her grandmother was Golden Age icon Debbie Reynolds, and her mother was the incomparable Carrie Fisher. Before her beloved mother and grandmother passed away, Billie had the opportunity to enter the Star Wars universe with her mom when she reprised her role as Leia Organa in the sequel trilogy. Billie played Lieutenant Connix, one of the Resistance leaders, in all three of the sequel trilogy films and was able to share multiple scenes with her mom as their characters lead the Resistance to defeat the First Order led by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
Stream all three on Disney+
5 Leslie Man and Maude & Iris Apatow - This is 40 (2012)
This is 40
- Release Date
- December 20, 2012
- Director
- Judd Apatow
- Cast
- Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow, Jason Segel, Annie Mumolo
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Comedy
Judd Apatow's This Is 40 isn't the first movie that sisters Maude and Iris Apatow have starred in with their mother Leslie Mann or been directed under by their father, but it's the one they have the most screen time in. The Apatow girls and their mom were in Knocked Up and Funny People, also directed by Apatow, prior to This Is 40. The comedy follows married couple Peter (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Mann) who are both about to turn 40 as their businesses are failing, and they're on the verge of losing their house. Plus, their kids Sadie (Maude Apatow) and Charlotte (Iris Apatow) hate each other. While Iris has only been in a few projects since then, Maude has begun paving her own way in the industry, notably on the HBO show Euphoria.
Stream it on Starz
4 Blythe Danner & Gwyneth Paltrow - Sylvia (2003)
About ten years after they starred in the TV miniseries Cruel Doubt, mother-daughter duo Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow worked together again in the film Sylvia. The film is a biography of the real-life poets Sylvia Plath (Paltrow) and Edward James "Ted" Hughes (Daniel Craig) and their complicated marriage. Danner got to play pretend mom to her real-life daughter since she played Aurelia Plath, Sylvia's mother.
Stream it on Plex
3 Angelina Jolie & Vivienne Jolie-Pitt - Maleficent (2014)
Maleficent
- Release Date
- May 28, 2014
- Director
- Robert Stromberg
- Cast
- Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple
- Rating
- PG
- Main Genre
- Fantasy
Angelina Jolie took on the iconic Disney villain in the 2014 film Maleficent opposite Elle Fanning, who played Princess Aurora. Instead of remaking or retelling the story of Sleeping Beauty, Disney decided to give us a full back-story on the memorable villain and how she came to know Aurora. In this tale, Maleficent was once a pure-hearted woman in a peaceful kingdom who is betrayed when she becomes the kingdom's fiercest protector when an invading army threatens to take over. Bent on revenge, she places a curse on the king's newborn daughter but realizes as Aurora grows up, she realizes the child may be the key to peace in the kingdom.
The costume that Jolie wears in the movie was frightening to many of the child actors who could have played young Aurora, mostly due to the large horns Maleficent wears. In fact, the only child that wasn't scared was Jolie's own daughter, Vivienne Jolie-Pitt. Since she was the only child who could handle being in Jolie's vicinity, Jolie-Pitt was cast as 5-year-old Aurora.
Stream it on Disney+
2 Diane Ladd & Laura Dern - Wild at Heart (1990)
Laura Dern has worked with director David Lynch frequently throughout her career. The first collaboration was in 1986 with Blue Velvet, and since then she has gone on to star in other projects of his such as Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return. She also starred as one of the leads in his 1990 film Wild at Heart, and she actually got to work with her mother while shooting the film.
As with any Lynch movie, Wild at Heart is beautifully bizarre. It follows young lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Dern) as they run away to California together following Sailor's release from prison. Lula's psychotic mother can't stand the thought of the two of them together, so she hires an assassin to hunt Sailor down. Blissfully unaware of her mother's shenanigans, the couple happily continue their journey. Until they come across a young woman dying after a car accident, which is a bad omen. Dern's real-life mother, Diane Ladd, played Lula's obsessive mother Marietta in a rather unhinged performance that almost rivals Cage's.
1 Susan Sarandon & Eva Amurri - Mothers and Daughters (2016)
Mothers and Daughters
- Release Date
- May 6, 2016
- Director
- Paul Duddridge, Nigel Levy
- Cast
- Selma Blair, Luke Mitchell, symmetry, Gilles Marini, Ella Stabile, Natalie Burn
- Rating
- PG-13
- Genres
- Drama, Documentary
Mothers and Daughters has quite a recognizable cast, including Christina Ricci, Selma Blair, Courteney Cox, Sharon Stone, and even Ashanti. The movie is a set of intertwined stories about being a mother as seen through the eyes of a photographer named Rigby (Blair). It also stars Susan Sarandon as one of the mothers, Millie. Her daughter in the movie, Gayle, is actually played by Sarandon's real-life daughter, Eva Amurri.
This isn't the only time Sarandon and Amurri co-starred in a movie together, and it isn't even the first time they played mother and daughter in a movie. Amurri has practically curated her career by starring alongside her powerhouse mother. She played the younger versions of Sarandon's characters in Dead Man Walking and That's My Boy. She also played her mother's daughter again in The Banger Sisters.
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