Growing up in a famous family meant a “pretty chaotic” childhood for Elizabeth Olsen, but her starlet older sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley still made time to watch her perform… mostly because they had to.
In a recent interview with The Times of London, Elizabeth admitted that her sisters, who became household names playing Michelle Tanner on Full House and then later with their own preteen media empire, were “forced to watch all my plays my whole life and go to my dance performances.”
According to the outlet, Elizabeth got “cagey” when asked if Mary-Kate and Ashley — who eventually retired from acting and pursued careers in the fashion industry — had any advice for her as she set out in her own Hollywood endeavors. “No,” Elizabeth said. “We’re just a supportive family. It feels irrelevant to talk about it after 15 years of working.”
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Elizabeth Olsen, Ashley Olsen, and Mary Kate Olsen in 2016
However, of her decision to pursue an acting career like her sisters, the Eternity star said, “When you grow up in L.A., you think it’s trite to want to become an actor. It seems foolish — it’s a city where people come to act, and you should know better. I was a good student and knew there were other opportunities I could pursue, but I couldn’t think of what they were.”
The WandaVision actress has previously spoken about wanting to separate herself from her famous siblings from a young age, so much so she considered dropping “Olsen” from her stage name.
In 2021, she told Glamour UK, “I was 10 and I was curious about auditioning… and I realized very quickly it wasn’t for me because I was missing my sports teams, my dance class and all the extracurricular activities at school. But during that time, I thought, ‘I don’t want to be associated with [Mary-Kate and Ashley],’ for some reason.”
She continued, “I guess I understood what nepotism was like inherently as a 10-year-old. I don’t know if I knew the word, but there is some sort of association of not earning something that I think bothered me at a very young age. It had to do with my own insecurities, but I was 10. So I don’t know how much I processed, but I did think, ‘I’m going to be Elizabeth Chase [her middle name] when I become an actress.'”
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Elizabeth also told the outlet that she did learn one crucial lesson from Mary-Kate and Ashley, though: The power of the word “no.”
“The word ‘No’ specifically was something that I remember my sisters isolating and it becoming really empowering,” she said at the time. “And for women, it’s a really empowering word. People say ‘Just say no to drugs’, but truly, you can just say no whenever the hell you want! It’s really a powerful thing.”
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