The adorable identical twin boys, who captured our hearts almost 25 years ago with their playful performance as the precocious little boy on Big Daddy with Adam Sandler, are no longer little. Nor are they boys.
Now handsome 30-year-old men, Dylan and his younger brother by 15 minutes Cole, are not as attached as they were at the start of their careers, but they are still very close.
Born in 1992, the adorable blond boys were only 8 months when they started sharing roles as one toddler or child in commercials, TV and film.
With Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen–of Full House fame–serving as testament, identical twins are a huge resource in Hollywood due to child labor laws that prevent children from working too many hours.
That was when they played Zach and Cody in The Suite Life of Zach & Cody, an Emmy-nominated Disney show that ran three seasons starting in 2005. When the series ended, their roles as Zach and Cody crossed the Disney universe into other shows, like Hannah Montana with Miley Cyrus, and in their film, The Suite Life Movie.
Driving young girls wild, the teenage heartthrobs’ popularity was growing, but level-headed, the young men moved onto the next phase and went to New York University, Dylan studying video game design and Zack humanities and archaeology.
“I needed to take a break and step outside myself, I needed a dose of reality, and I needed to see myself in a more objective point of view. And now I think I can enjoy [acting], which is a really fundamental part about being an actor,” Cole said, explaining that the long-running Disney series had him feeling like a machine. “I’m not saying that we didn’t enjoy that time, but it was work. It’s a career and a business, and it got me to college, which is one of the most fantastic gifts I could’ve been given. But I’m glad to be [acting] on my own accord now.”
Both graduating in 2015, Cole returned to television, again acting without his brother.
Their distinct personalities are guiding them on separate journeys, and as individual men, they are no longer sharing one role.
