What Really Happened To Mary-Kate And Ashley Olsen?

For those who were children in the late 1980s and early 1990s, or happened to be around them, the Olsen twins were inescapable superstars. Identical, adorable, and precocious Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were charismatic pop culture icons for nearly the entirety of their childhoods. Cast as baby Michelle Tanner on the hit ABC sitcom "Full House" — a staple of the "TGIF" lineup until it disappeared — the Olsens alternated playing the thumbs-upping, catchphrase-generating character until they were almost nine years old. Concurrently and after "Full House," a show with a tragic real-life story, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen starred in a series of lucrative straight-to-video movies and lent their names and images to a slew of top-selling merchandise. But shortly after their shared 18th birthday, Mary-Kate and Ashley pulled back on the acting, the marketing, and public life in general, nearly becoming child stars who completely disappeared.

Since the end of "Full House" and the Olsen twins leaving Hollywood, laugh tracks, and the direct-to-VHS market behind, they've led remarkable and eventful lives, both on their own and separately. Want to know what Mary-Kate and Ashley have been doing for the past few decades? You got it, dude!

In 1993, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's manager at the time, Robert Thorne, formed Dualstar Entertainment Group. An umbrella corporation, it oversaw all of the Olsen twins' non-"Full House" revenue streams, including music albums, numerous direct-to-video movies, toys, dolls, cosmetics, fragrances, books, and other items bearing their names and likenesses. Dualstar, with the child stars at the forefront as much as possible, is credited with recognizing and marketing to a previously ignored demographic: kids between the ages of eight and 12, or "tweens."

A decade after its launch, the Olsens' company, thanks in large part to a wildly popular clothing line for girls sold at Walmart, brought in annual revenues of more than $1 billion. In 2004, while the Olsens were first-year students at New York University and had just turned 18, they fully took over Dualstar, buying out the share of founder and CEO Thorne. "The decision was to respect their desire to take the helm perhaps a few years earlier than I had anticipated," Thorne told Reuters (via Entertainment Weekly). All the merchandise from Dualstar had helped make the Olsens very rich: At the time they became the chief owners of their company, each had a net worth of around $137 million and ranked on Forbes' list of the highest-earning celebrities. They're decidedly not child stars who lost all their money.

After allowing their names to grace a line of Walmart children's clothing when they were just kids themselves, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen became fashion designers and clothing brand owners many times over in adulthood. In 2006, inspired by Ashley's dissatisfaction with well-made basics made by other lines and a desire to produce an ideal simple white tee, the Olsen twins created The Row. It quickly established itself as a fashion house associated with simple, high-quality, non-flashy garments and accessories appealing to women and men. "We were raised to be discreet people," Mary-Kate Olsen told i-D Magazine (via Vanity Fair). To that end, Ashley Olsen admitted that the company kept quiet about its famous founders. "We didn't want to be in front of it, we didn't necessarily even want to let people know it was us," she said (via InStyle). "It was really about the product, to the point where we were like: Who could we get to front this so that we don't have to?"

A year after launching The Row, the Olsens created a more budget-conscious but still purportedly luxurious offshoot called Elizabeth and James, named for the twins' siblings, a Marvel Cinematic Universe star and a comic book writer, respectively. Other Olsen-operated fashion lines include Olsenboye and StyleMint.

In 2012, Mary-Kate Olsen quietly debuted a romantic relationship when she began to show up at high society events in New York City with Olivier Sarkozy in tow. A major player in the French banking industry who is 17 years older than Olsen, the couple hit it off at a party and got married in 2015. Only occasionally seen out and about, the pair mostly hit hotspots in New York City late at night and hung around their home in the Hamptons upstate because they wouldn't be harassed by photographers who wanted to snap a pic of Sarkozy, Olsen, and his two children from a previous relationship.

Five years after the wedding, Olsen and Sarkozy's marriage was over. In May 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic leading New York City's court system to hear only urgent separation cases, Olsen filed for an emergency divorce. Sarkozy allegedly nullified a lease on the couple's apartment without telling his estranged wife, which would've forced the former actor to vacate during a period in which shelter-in-place and lockdown laws were in effect. In order to stay housed, Olsen had to petition for the emergency divorce. After later decamping to the Hamptons for the duration of pandemic lockdowns, Olsen moved back to Manhattan's Upper East Side and started dating again in late 2020.

Paired professionally with her twin sister almost from birth in acting and then fashion, Ashley Olsen found a personal life partner in Louis Eisner. Olsen and Eisner, set up by mutual friends, were first seen together at the 2017 Gala in the Garden at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and made it publicly official when they showed up on a red carpet together at a charity event in Beverly Hills in 2021.

Eisner is a visual artist and member of the Still House Group school, raised in Santa Monica, California, by a photographer mother and an entertainment industry executive father. The extremely private pair — Olsen has never discussed Eisner in interviews, and he's posted exactly one photo of the former actor on his social media — reportedly got married in 2022. In mid-2023, Olsen welcomed a baby, a boy named Otto. The birth was publicly revealed several months after the fact.

The 2004 movie "New York Minute" was marketed as a step into the commercial mainstream for stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Only their second ever theatrically released feature film, and the first after "It Takes Two" nine years earlier, it marked a decided leveling up from child-targeted, direct-to-video and made-for-TV fare as it was a romantic comedy about a pair of young adults getting into exploits in the big city. The first entry in a new era, "New York Minute" marks the last time that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen acted on any screen together. The movie bombed at the box office, taking in just $14 million.

Ashley Olsen became the first of the pair to walk away from acting. After "New York Minute," she had cameos as "Kissing Girl #3" and herself, respectively, in 2008's "The Jerk Theory" and 2010's "I'm Still Here." After publicly discussing a potential return to acting — "Never say never," Olsen told OK! Magazine — she's made just one more narrative acting appearance. In 2022, she starred in an obscure short film called "You and I."

While twin sister Ashley Olsen moved away from focusing her professional life on acting in the 2000s, Mary-Kate Olsen kept at it as a solo act. Olsen landed small but significant roles in a string of high-profile, hip, and independent features in the years following her sister's retirement from the double act. She portrayed an unnamed art gallery patron in the Andy Warhol circle biopic "Factory Girl" in 2006 before being cast against type as a rebellious, drug-using teenager on the cable comedy "Weeds." Eight episodes of that hit show represented Olsen's longest live-action TV stint since the 2000-2001 sitcom "So Little Time," and she kept going with an appearance in the indie period piece "The Wackness" and on the sitcom "Samantha Who?"

Mary-Kate Olsen would soon join her sister in the club of former actors. Following a supporting role in the 2011 young adult novel adaptation "Beastly," she retired from acting and hasn't played a character on screen since.

While still rising stars in the high fashion world with their various lines, collections, and design houses, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen paid tribute to the figures who inspired them. In 2008, the pair authored "Influence," a large-format, coffee-table-style book full of photos and illustrations centered on those the Olsens deemed icons in fashion, or the most "creative" and "dynamic" forces in what people wear, according to The New York Times. The first published work for both Olsen twins, "Influence" combined descriptive profiles of people like Diane Von Furstenberg and John Galiano with interviews with models and designers, such as Lauren Hutton and Karl Lagerfeld, respectively. 

They aimed to document art with what they hoped was a piece of art itself. "That's what we want this book to be, something that is filled with interesting things about the art world and fashion," Ashley Olsen told the New York Times. "I'd like to think that this book is inspiring people to read about or focus on other things than just the oversaturated, scandal-driving media." Covering the history of clothing, shoes, and jewelry, the Olsens focused on interviewing people they knew from their fashion days and filled out the nearly 300-page, $60 list priced tome with dozens of model-type spreads featuring Mary-Kate and Ashley themselves.

Despite all their accomplishments, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen will probably forever be best known for "Full House." The twins alternated playing Michelle Tanner from 1987 to 1995 on the sitcom about a widowed dad raising his three daughters with the help of his best friend and brother-in-law. From 2016 to 2020, Netflix produced a revival series, "Fuller House." Focused on elder Tanner siblings D.J. and Stephanie Tanner, Michelle was the only major character from the original "Full House" who never popped up for at least a cameo on the reboot — and so neither Olsen twin showed up either.

Co-star John Stamos, who portrayed Uncle Jesse on both iterations of "Full House," blames himself. "We got a hold of their agent and asked them to do it — 'No.' In retrospect, I should have called them and talked to them, I guess," Stamos told The Hollywood Reporter's "Awards Chatter" podcast. But when he did eventually reach out personally, the Olsens said they never got an offer because they no longer employ acting agents. "And then I talked to Mary-Kate at length and she was sort of interested in talking about it, and she wanted me to call Ashley, and I don't think I did," Stamos said, adding that the fact that neither had acted in a while affected their decision to sit out the revival.

Even before she became the head of multiple clothing lines and apart from her direct, professional, effect on the styles worn by people of all ages, Mary-Kate Olsen was already a highly influential fashion figure. In the mid-2000s, one of the most popular and widely seen styles in women's fashion was known by a variety of names, some of them derisive — hobo, boho or Bohemian, bag lady chic, and ashcan chic are but a few of the labels for a way of dressing perpetuated in large part by Mary-Kate Olsen.

New York City is a culture, fashion, and celebrity hotspot, and in 2004, Olsen began attending classes at New York University and was hounded by photographers, who captured images of the former child star wearing wide-brimmed hats, gigantic sunglasses, full-length skirts, and oversized cardigan sweaters. Olsen's autumnal looks were widely imitated, as were her choices the following spring; both her and her sister — and fellow NYU freshman — Ashley Olsen, although to a lesser extent, earned praise from the fashion media. "Ms. Olsen is a fashion pauvre, and so is her equally funky twin, Ashley," wrote Ruth La Ferla in The New York Times in 2005. "The twins are trendsetters for the latest hipster look."

"Full House" ended its eight-season run in 1995 with a two-part episode in which Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's character, Michelle Tanner, suffers amnesia after a horseback riding accident. In real life, both Olsens were avid equestrians by that time, with Mary-Kate Olsen turning the pursuit into a passion in adulthood.

Olsen rode with her high-school team, but stopped upon a move to New York City in the 2000s. An owner as well as an athlete, Olsen's horse Marvelous won its events at the Hampton Classic Horse Show in Long Island, New York in 2013. Olsen got back into competing herself in the 2010s, riding in the Hampton Classic Horse Show in New York and the Palm Beach Masters in Florida. Olsen and horse Dunotaire V finished in seventh place at the 2018 Palm Beach Open, and in 2021, she placed third with Iowa Van Het Polderhof in jumping events at the Longines Global Champions Tour in Rome.

After they assumed control of their businesses by reaching the legal age of majority in 2004, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen first ventured into the ownership of a fashion line. The 18-year-old designers and entrepreneurs took control of Mary-Kate & Ashley, a long-standing and best-selling collection of apparel for girls and young women, sold exclusively at Walmart and produced by the retail chain's suppliers. One of the first steps the twins made as the new heads of a fashion line was to take a stand against the low-cost, overseas sweatshop labor employed by so many other fashion lines.

The National Labor Committee, along with a coalition of students from New York University, where the Olsens were enrolled at the time, urged the siblings to publicly come out against sweatshops. After seven months of the siblings' company, DualStar Entertainment, failing to publicly identify the factories in Bangladesh where Mary-Kate & Ashley clothes were made, the Olsens added their names to a petition asking Wal-Mart and its factories to promise maternity leave and other benefits to its female employees. "The Olsen twins have done the right thing," the National Labor Committee said in a statement (via UPI).

Before her marriage to banker Olivier Sarkozy, Mary-Kate Olsen briefly saw Heath Ledger in 2007 and 2008, and that's something we only learned about Ledger after he died. The relationship coincided with the end of the actor's life. "Mary-Kate and Heath were casually dating for three months before Heath's death," someone close to the couple told People. "They were hooking up, but neither were particularly interested in making it exclusive." Ledger was discovered dead in a New York City apartment on January 22, 2008, by masseuse Diana Wolozin. Before dialing 911 for emergency assistance, Wolozin first called Olsen — who was programmed as a contact in Ledger's phone — and asked how to proceed, Olsen then reportedly promised to reach out to a private security firm. After three calls with Olsen, Wolozin finally called paramedics, who pronounced Ledger dead.

Among the disturbing details discovered in Heath Ledger's autopsy report: the actor died from an overdose of prescription sleeping aids, anti-anxiety meds, and painkillers. Authorities attempted to determine how the actor came into the possession of the drugs that led to his death, and the investigation led to Olsen. Her lawyer released a statement claiming that their client had "nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Ledger's home or his body" (via the Independent), while Olsen didn't divulge any information to DEA agents because she wasn't promised legal immunity.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).