Lords Of The Dance

Eric and Steve Cohen
the Dancing Twins on 'Ally McBeal"
are double the fun.

Staff Writer

hey've only done this three-
way thing once before, so it
takes a minute to get it
going.
"How do you guys want to do
this?" I ask. Steve picks up, then Eric.
I can't hear Eric. Static. "It was work-
ing a second ago," one of them says. I
can't tell their voices apart. "Can you
hear me now?"
It took forever to get all of us on
the phone together — understandable,
as it's only their second interview.
Fame is a new thing for Eric and Steve
Cohen, the Dancing Twins on Fox's
hot new show, "Ally McBeal."
Their voices inflected
with identical Los Angeles
surfer-dude accents, the
Cohen brothers (not to be
confused with the Coen
brothers, but that's another
story) are playing up their
sameness with a passion.
The twins' parents never
dressed them in matching
outfits. They even enrolled
them in separate classes at
school to encourage individ-
uality.
But TV viewers obvious-
ly notice the ways they are
alike — both 6-foot-1-
inch, lanky, dressed in
matching outfits and danc-
ing popular jigs like the
Funky Chicken or the
Train, which they choreo-
graph themselves.
So how are they differ-
ent?
Steve: "I'm a little bit
tew
more outgoing. But we're
pretty similar. We like kind
of the same things. We don't
think we really look that
much alike. It's just other
people who get confused."
Eric: "We're trying to

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1998

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look as much alike as possible."
Yep. In an early November TV
Guide article, which, incidentally,
names the Cohens "the real Lords of
the Dance," "Ally" co-executive pro-
ducer Jeffrey Kramer concurs. "I've
never seen them not dressed alike," he
says.
So obviously the twin thing is
something the brothers can sell. But
do they ever wish they could go it
alone in Hollywood?
"It's hard to make it as an actor, so
this was our quickest way into the
business," says Eric. "... on our own,
it's a lot harder. Even with this break,
it's still probably going to be hard to
go out by ourselves."
Says Steve, "It's also nice having

someone there that you know when
you're working; you're not by your-
self."
No sibling rivalry between these
two, but they're guys after all, and we
all know guys rarely fight — they
compete. In this case, though, team-

Steve and Eric Cohen:
McBears"
dancing duo.

e A. H. Smith

LYNNE MEREDITH COHN

0
O

0.

work is good. When
one does well at an
audition, they both get
the part.
The Cohen twins
grew up in Stanford,
Calif, the sons of a
Jewish father and
Swedish mother. Their
one non-look-alike
brother is working on
his Ph.D. in math at

the University of Chicago. He's 10
years younger than the twins, who will
not say how old they are. (A Toronto
Sun article pegs them at 33.)
Graduates of Stanford

— Eric in art, Steve in communica-
tions — they started acting "late in
life. We've always been interested in
film," says Eric. "We sort of fell into
doing small parts and then we
thought we might be able to make
some money at it."
Seems like they have. The Cohens
have juggled on "Seinfeld," "Mad
About You" and "Baywatch," and
Steve doubled Jim Carrey in Batman
Forever and The Cable Guy.
But twin actors know they've really
made it when they flash those pearly
whites on a Doublemint gum com-
mercial, say the Cohens. They haven't
contacted Wrigley's yet, but they're
thinking about sending some articles
about their newfound success to the