"We're normal teenagers - except we travel more and we run a company." -

Mary-Kate Olsen

Though they look identical,

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

, born on June 13th, 1986 in Sherman Oaks, California, are actually fraternal twins. Ashley is the "older" one, arriving a full two minutes before her sister. A close family friend persuaded reluctant mother Jarnette to take the four-month-old babies to an audition for a TV sitcom that was about to begin filming. After the producers held the babies in their arms without inducing any crying, the twins were rewarded with their first role, in the easiest audition they would ever have to do.

Shortly after the end of Full House, they returned to the entertainment industry, riding the momentum of their role on Full House by heavily merchandising their image. Taking the world of tweens by storm, their names have become a very profitable industry, with their likeness seen in clothes, fragrances, magazines, movies, posters, and even video games like Mary Kate and Ashley's Magical Mystery Mall.

Today, Mary-Kate and Ashley are popular figures in today's tween market, following along the lines of such Hollywood child stars as Shirley Temple, Ron Howard and Macaulay Culkin among others. They were ranked at number three on the VH1 program 100 Greatest Child Stars.

The twins received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 29, 2004. They are the youngest celebrities to receive this honor.

Ashley Olsen

Name: Ashley Olsen
Birth Name: Ashley Fuller Olsen
Birth Date: June 13, 1986
Birth Place: Sherman Oaks,California,USA
Sex: F
Height: 5'3"
Father: David Olsen (mortgage banker; born in 1953; divorced in February 1996)
Mother: Jarnie Olsen (manager)
Brother: Trent Olsen (born in 1982)
Sister: Mary-Kate Olsen (twin sister), Elizabeth Olsen (born on February 16, 1989)
Nationality: American
Profession: Actress
Education: Campbell Hall, North Hollywood, California
Enrolled at New York University in Sept. 2004
Relationship: Scott Sartiano (club owner; met in NYC fall 2004 at Sartiano-owned hotspot Butter)
Claim to fame: As Michelle Elizabeth Tanner on Full House (1987)

Biography
Born June 13, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, CA, Ashley Olsen is one-half of the multimillion-dollar franchise known as The Olsen Twins. Long before the identical pair had unwittingly indoctrinated themselves into the hearts and minds of adoring pre-pubescent girls (and vaguely creepy fraternity boys), however, Ashley and her sister, Mary-Kate Olsen, were simply the youngest members of the long-running sitcom Full House, which hired them just a year after their birth. Because of U.S. child-labor laws, the girls took turns playing Full House's resident cute baby girl, Michelle Tanner. Before long, Ashley and Mary-Kate had their own catchphrase ("You got it, dude"), which reverberated in the ears of Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) and throughout American audiences loudly enough to merit a TVQ rating -- the sitcom world's most prominent popularity contest -- second only to Bill Cosby.

Ashley Olsen continued her part-time role as Michelle until Full House came to a close in 1995, though she took time out to film several family-oriented straight-to-video releases, including To Grandmother's House We Go (1992), Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (1993), and How the West Was Fun (1994). Luckily for Olsen, the demise of Full House hardly marked the end of her career. Along with her sister, Ashley's success in the family-oriented video market planted the seeds for what would eventually become a multimillion-dollar empire with enough punch to land the twins the 83rd spot in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 most powerful celebrities in 2003.

1995 marked Ashley's big-screen debut as the wealthy, worldly twin-sister in It Takes Two, a thinly veiled send-up of The Parent Trap opposite Kirstie Alley and Steve Guttenberg. Olsen also participated in the short-lived 1998 television series Two of a Kind, which, like Full House, followed a widower's efforts to raise his children. This time, however, Ashley and Mary-Kate's identical status served as a gimmick rather than an irksome legal necessity. (The producers of Full House had insisted on crediting the twins as

"Mary Kate Ashley Olsen"

in an effort to hide their sisterhood.)

By the early 2000s, Ashley had established herself as part of a verifiable marketing gold mine and, oddly enough, the not-quite-legal forbidden fruit of American pop culture. In addition to a juvenile book series, magazine, scads of videos and DVDs, countless talk show appearances. The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley TV series, a clothing line, perfume, and an estimated combined net worth of more than 300-million dollars, the girls also attracted the unwanted attention of hundreds of decidedly less-wholesome Internet sites counting the days until their 18th birthday.

The girls deemed this attention, as well as their

Number 61 ranking in For Him Magazine's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" in 2003

as, simply, "gross." After a bit part in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle that same year, Ashley both co-produced and starred in New York Minute (2004), which follows -- what else? -- a set of identical twins whose attempt at a day in Manhattan lands them in the midst of a high-profile political scandal. In addition to having become a self-made millionaire by the time she was ten, Ashley Olsen enjoys golf, tennis, dancing, Tea Boa, and spending time with her sister.
~ Tracie Cooper, AllMovieGuide.com