Elizabeth Olsen Says Sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Were ‘Forced’ to Support Her Career

Elizabeth Olsen is opening up about what it was like to build her own acting career amid her older sisters Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s immense fame.

The twin siblings, now 39, became household names — and global stars — playing Michelle Tanner in the family sitcom Full House, which aired from 1987 to 1995. During their tween and teen years, they starred together in the series So Little Time, as well as in numerous movies, including Winning London and When in Rome.

Elizabeth, 36, recalled that time in a new interview with The Times, describing her childhood as “pretty chaotic.”

“I was the youngest of four, and we were all born within five years,” she said, remembering hanging out as a child on sets while Mary-Kate and Ashley were working.

“So now I think the idea of a calm bath and bedtime story routine is so tender and sweet because we didn’t have anything like that,” she said.

She shared how Ashley and Mary-Kate were “forced” to support their younger sister as she built her own acting career.

“[They] were forced to watch all my plays my whole life and go to my dance performances,” she explained.

Elizabeth said Ashley and Mary-Kate — who now work in fashion, helming their label The Row, which was founded in 2005 — did not give her acting advice but were “supportive” of her endeavours.

“We’re just a supportive family,” she told The Times, adding, “It feels irrelevant to talk about it after 15 years of working.”

The WandaVision star also shared that she almost quit acting due to the intense scrutiny her twin sisters faced growing up in the spotlight.

Reflecting on her choice to pursue a showbiz career, Elizabeth told the outlet, “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.”

She said that when she decided to get into acting, she studied the craft “to legitimise it for me.” She spent a term at Moscow Art Theatre School in 2009, describing the experience of living in the Russian city as “profound.”

“Moscow and St Petersburg are cities that fully revolve around the arts — you almost hardly ever see political statues because they keep wiping them out, so instead there are just loads of poets and writers that have stayed up for hundreds of years and are the voice of the people,” Elizabeth told The Times. “And I saw the best theatre I’ve seen in any city in my life.”

Elizabeth previously opened up about her attempts to avoid any “nepotism” that could come along with being Mary-Kate and Ashley’s younger sibling as she launched her career — including considering using her middle name, Chase, as an actress.

“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,” she told Glamour UK in 2021 of her early interest in the industry.

“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.”

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While Elizabeth said the realization ultimately “had to do with [her] own insecurities,” she remembered thinking as a child, “I’m going to be Elizabeth Chase when I become an actress.”