I'd never done it with identical twins before. They'd never done it at all. They were nervous. I was gentle. So Steve and Eric Cohen survived their first-ever interview. It was conducted, of course, together. Over the phone from Eric's L.A. apartment, they sound as alike as they look. "Just write `Steve or Eric and good for both of us,' " one of the 33-year-olds suggests agreeably as I wonder how to figure out who is saying what. Being indistinguishable is proving to be good for their careers. After appearances in the movies Batman Forever and Batman And Robin and on Seinfeld, Mad About You and Baywatch, they've become a quirky regular feature of Fox's critically-hot comedy-drama Ally McBeal. They were hired for the show's pilot as a one-time sight gag, dressed alike in flashy clothes and dancing in synch at Ally's habitual watering hole. Now they're in every other episode, including tonight's. So far they've only had one bit of dialogue - "Hey, Ally" - and that was dubbed in by someone else to save money. Visitors to their amusing Dancing Twins website (http://members.aol. com/allytwins) are asked to theorize on the characters' backgrounds. So far, they've been pegged as everything from FBI agents to programmers of computer fantasy games. Unlike many twins who endure a childhood of looking like bookends then rebel to declare their individuality, the Cohen brothers are going in reverse. Their parents rarely clothed them alike and had them in separate classes in grade school. Both are grads of Stanford University, but Eric studied art and Steve took communications. Today, they live close by but apparently not close enough. They're thinking of buying a house together. "We like it. That's what we're trying to sell in a way, our togetherness," they say. "If we were individuals, then I don't think this town would have been interested in us. But because we're twins, that's something unique. For the auditions for twins, there's only a handful of people who can go to those." At which they discuss what in the waiting room, do you suppose? How about the Twin Pinnacle of Success? "Twins always talk about getting on the Doublemint commercial. That's the place to be if you're a twin. But the thing is, growing up we noticed there were always women on the ads, twin women and then two different guys." Whether or not a big break from the gum company is forthcoming, the Cohens will soon be seen on The Pretender and in the movie Baby Geniuses. "We're hoping we'll get a spinoff TV show. Everybody jokes about that so there's some sense to it, I think. "Or maybe we'll go straight to feature films. We have a script for a juggling movie we've written with a friend of ours in which we play the world's greatest jugglers. We think it could be the biggest juggling movie of all time." |