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Q: There are striking resemblances between Julia Roberts and Jessica Chastain. Are they related at all?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

No, but Bryce Dallas Howard thanks you for asking.

Jessica Chastain, the willowy, red-haired star best known for her Oscar-nominated turns in "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012) and "The Help" (2011), does share a few physical (and career) similarities with Julia Roberts, best known for being Julia Roberts.

However, she shares more similarities with "Jurassic World" (2015) star Bryce Dallas Howard, and I'm not the only one to point it out.

People had already been joking about it for a while when, in 2015, a YouTube user going by the name "legolambs" wrote and posted a joke song called "I Am Not Jessica Chastain (Bryce Dallas Howard)." It's written from the perspective of Howard and the chorus is, simply, "I am not Jessica Chastain."

The pair even got in on the joke themselves. Howard filmed herself lip-syncing to the song, and Chastain posted the video on her own Instagram, either clarifying or further confusing the situation.

To be fair, it's not just their looks. Howard and Chastain's career arcs are similar as well -- their biggest films came in the mid-'10s, and they even appeared in "The Help" together in 2011, when the moviegoing public was still getting to know them.

Roberts, on the other hand, was a megastar before these two even started working -- almost. Her biggest years were in the mid-'90s, though her first hit was 1988's "Mystic Pizza." That was a year before Howard had her film "debut," though it was just as a background extra in a movie her dad, Hollywood mogul Ron Howard, was making. If you look really hard, you can see Bryce in a scene in 1989's "Parenthood," when she was just 8 years old.

Her first real role -- like, with lines -- was 2000's "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." (Chastain's first role, for the record, was a guest spot in a 2004 episode of "ER.")

 

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