1. She has two other famous sisters
At 31 years old, Elizabeth is two years younger than 34-year-old famous sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley who started out as two of the most famous (and well paid) child stars in Hollywood history. Their acting career has been going on a lot longer than hers and are known for appearing in Full House, Two of a Kind, It Takes Two and Passport to Paris among other TV shows and films. She also has an older brother, Trent, along with two half-brothers, Jake and Taylor Olsen.
2. She’s the tallest among her sisters
Sadly, this meant that she couldn’t borrow her sisters clothes anymore. “I overgrew them in high school,” she told Refinery29.
“And then all of my friends started getting their hand-me-downs.”
“So I’ll be like “Hey Eliza, what is that dress?’ to one of my best friends. And she’ll say, ‘Oh, its Mary-Kate’s, she’s getting rid of some stuff.’ And I’m always like, ‘Great, because I couldn’t fit into it!’” she continued.
3. She started acting at the age of four
While her two older famous sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley started their career aged six-months-old when they were cast as Michelle Tanner in Full House. Elizabeth first acting role was at the age of four when she appeared in The Adventures Of Mary-Kate And Ashley, and a number of their other projects
4. Elizabeth Olsen virtually grew up on movie and TV sets
“It was just normal. It was never weird,” Elizabeth Olsen told Danny Pellegrino on his podcast, Everything Iconic.
“When my brother and I would get picked up from school, that was our after-school care,” she added, speaking to SFGate.
“It was really hanging around on set, so every once in a while, they’d ask us, ‘So, do you guys want to be in this one? We’ll put gum in your hair.’ To me, it was never acting. It was silly and fun.”
5. She has said she was embarrassed to be an actress
Elizabeth confessed that she was originally embarrassed to admit to others and to herself that she also wanted to act, like her older sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley: “…living in L.A., I was embarrassed to say that I wanted to be an actor. When I was 14 or 15, I was a really good volleyball player, so I thought, Well, maybe I’ll just get a scholarship to an Ivy League school through volleyball. Then I quit when I decided to focus on theater. I had a great drama teacher in high school, and that’s when I started to learn about the history of theater
6. She auditioned for a role in Spy Kids, but never got it
Elizabeth’s first audition was for the children-themed movie Spy Kids, when she was just 10 years old. She reportedly received a call back from the filmmakers, but failed to get the part. However, she is happy that she lost the part, as she feels taking the role would have type-cast her.
7. Elizabeth ‘pressed pause’ on acting at age 10
Elizabeth knew that she wanted to be an actor when she was a kid. So, her parents told her that she could try acting, but made sure she understood what she’d be sacrificing.
“My parents said, ‘OK, well if that’s what you really want to do, then you have to know that you are going to risk not being a part of the sports team, you’re going to have to risk not being a part of ballet after school.’ And so, I did that for three months of my childhood, but it wasn’t worth it to me to work for a living.”
“What I saw my sisters do was work, not play, and I really enjoyed ballet, and I really enjoyed playing sports,” Elizabeth told Parade. “It took away from that experience.”
“My dad quite literally asked me to write a pros and cons list so that I could make an informed decision at the age of—I think I was in fourth grade, so you’re 9 I think,” Elizabeth continued. “So I wrote a pros and cons list and I decided that it was more important for me to be able to do extracurriculars.”
8. Olsen studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2013.
A year after finishing college, Olsen appeared in a post-credits scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Thus her introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was born.
9. Her real breakthrough came in 2011
She starred in the independent thriller drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, for which she was nominated for the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.
The film was a hit among critics at the Sundance Film Festival, with Olsen described as “Little Miss Sundance”.
“I never thought I was going to go home from Sundance and find my whole life had changed, and honestly, it didn’t. I just went home. But it was exciting,” she told The Guardian in 2012.
10. She then went on to international success with her portrayal of Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films.
“After Martha Marcy May Marlene”, Olsen landed roles in films including Silent House, Liberal Arts, Very Good Girls, and Godzilla.
But it was her cameo as Scarlet Witch at the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier that made Olsen a household name.
Since the film premiered in 2014, Olsen has appeared in a number of films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame and is set to appear in
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness set to be released next year.
11. She looks up to her sisters a lot
“Everything my sisters have ever worn in my entire life I have wanted to wear still as an adult today,”
She told SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “I want their coats. I want their shoes. I want their dresses. And that is something that I never grew out of.”
12. But she doesn’t believe in nepotism
In an interview with The Guardian, she revealed she’s never played the famous sisters’ card to get roles.
“I figured I’d keep acting as a hobby until I was older. Because I felt that pressure, and that people would say, ‘Oh, that’s nepotism.’”
“I decided that as long as I felt confident and worked hard for it, instead of having it handed to me, no one could take that away from me.”
She continued:
“I don’t have any insecurity about it. I never got any job because of my sisters. I could have pulled a few strings through them, but I never needed to.”
13. She almost quit acting at one time
The year was 2004 and the reason was because the media went into a frenzy over her sister Mary-Kate’s reported struggle with an eating disorder.
“That was when the media was what I found to be abusive to my sisters, and I thought I really didn’t want to be in the industry,” she told Nylon Magazine, according to E! News.
“They turned 18 and what was going on in her life — I’m talking about Mary-Kate — was all over the news. They would follow us shopping and [Mary-Kate and Ashley] would almost get into car accidents because of the paparazzi, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I just thought, ‘This is such bulls**t.’”
14. She loves to cook
“I’m a huge foodie,” she admitted to Shine On Media. “I love cooking and going to restaurants. That’s something I actively do. For my birthday my mom and I went to Williams & Sonoma and she bought me pots. I couldn’t be more happy to have a new set of pots… I started doing dinner parties when I was 17. I threw them seasonally. I really like making this one pasta with raw zucchini. You just make zucchini look like pasta and you marinate it in a sauce and it just becomes a pasta.”
But the one food she would never eat is innards. “Innards, like sweetbreads. No thanks!,” she says.
15. She’s currently dating Robbie Arnett
Elizabeth dated actor Boyd Holbrook in 2013 and was also linked to actor Tom Hiddleston in 2015.
She’s now dating Robbie Arnett, the lead singer of Milo Greene. They confirmed their relationship when they stepped out for the first time as a couple in September 2017. The couple became engaged in 2019.
Speaking to Modern Living, Olsen shared that she is open to starting a family with Arnett.
“I was also thinking, ‘There’s this small room upstairs, which would be good for a kid,’” she told the publication…I don’t know where things will lead, but I do think about it in that way: ‘I think I could raise kids here.’”
16. She loves house flipping and decorating
She told Us Weekly that she loves the Architectural Digest home tour videos.
“My favorite one so far is Dominic West. He and his wife live in an old castle.” She also says she follows interior designers, house flippers and people who are into pottery [on social media].
17. She think she blew her chance of becoming ‘pals’ with Taylor Swift
While doing promo for Captain America: Civil War, in which Olsen’s character Wanda Maximoff appeared in, she stopped by The Late Late Show with James Corden. Olsen recounted an anecdote in the interview when she met Swift and said how the encounter didn’t go exactly how she would’ve wanted.
“I was at a birthday party for someone who I grew up with here,” Olsen began the story. “I don’t go out at night and it was apparently at a speakeasy but it felt like a club to me. I was comfortable, in good company.”
“Later in the night, Taylor Swift comes up to me, and I really love her,” Olsen stated. “Earlier in my ballet class, I was doing a dance sequence to her music.”
“I just talked at her for a long time,” Olsen continued. “I think I blew it. Because we didn’t exchange phone numbers or anything.”
Olsen then said she told Swift that she worked out to Swift’s songs in ballet class. The WandaVision star had trouble remembering which song it was when Swift asked.
“I couldn’t remember the song title,” Olsen admitted. “And I wasn’t going to sing it for her, you know. And I was like, ‘There’s one with a lot of ‘Ah!’ sounds.’ I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t want to sound like I was mocking, because I’m not. I’m still nervous thinking about it right now. But she named a title, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that one!’”
18. Her net worth
She’s worth $11 million dollars according to CelebrityNetWorth.
References: Mamamia, Diply, CheatSheet, Thethings, Thelist, NickiSwift.
