From Madonna to Cindy Crawford, stars who have passed down distinctive traits to their lookalike girls
WE all know the phrase “like mother like daughter”, but why do so many of us take after our mums? Last week actress Julianne Moore shared a photo of lookalike 18-year-old daughter Liv. The teen has inherited Mum’s striking red locks and fair, freckly skin.
And she is far from the only celebrity offspring not to fall far from the tree. We look at what traits these daughters have inherited from their famous mums . . . and the genetics behind their resemblance.
CINDY AND KAIA — height and body shape
SUPERMODEL Cindy Crawford and mini-me daughter, Kaia, don’t just look like twins in the face. At the same height of 5ft 9in, they also have almost identical-shaped bodies.
At the pinnacle of her modelling career, Cindy also had a 34B bust, 23in waist and 35in hips – almost exactly the same as 18-year-old Kaia’s now.
Overall, the height of the father has been found to be more important in determining how tall a child will be – and Kaia’s dad Rande Gerber is 6ft 1in.
However, studies have also revealed that a mother’s genes are more likely to influence how much body fat their daughters will have and what shape they will be, according to research from the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
This explains why Kaia has also inherited Cindy’s long-legged, naturally slim build.
JULIANNE and LIV — red hair
DEEP within your hair follicles, special cells make the pigment that feeds into your hair as it grows.
People with red hair have higher levels of a red/yellow pigment called pheomelanin.
Actress Julianne Moore, 59, is Hollywood’s most famous redhead. And it’s a trait she’s passed on to 18-year-old Liv, even though her dad, director Bart Freundlich, 50, has dark brown hair.
As a recessive trait, the red hair gene variant – or the difference in our DNA code that determines ginger hair – must be inherited from both parents for a child’s hair to be red, too.
So Bart must have the red hair gene in his family tree, even though it doesn’t show up in his own colouring.
REESE and AVA — pointed chin
THE left and right halves of the lower jaw start out as two bones when babies develop in the womb, and then join up in babyhood before settling on their final length during the teenage years.
The final length of these bones and their shape is one of the features that gets most obviously passed down from parent to child, according to a study of facial genetics by scientists at King’s College, London.
This is certainly the case with 20-year-old Ava Phillippe, who has inherited her more prominent pointed chin from her Legally Blonde actress mother Reese Witherspoon, 44, rather than the rounded, softer jaw of her 45-year-old actor dad Ryan Phillippe.
With two of Hollywood’s hottest stars as her parents, it is no wonder Ava is pursuing a career in modelling.
KATE and LILA — rosebud lips
THE facial feature that is the second most likely to be inherited from a parent is one many people don’t notice – the space between your nose and your lip, called the philtrum.
You are 62 per cent likely to inherit this length from one of your parents, according to scientists from King’s College London, who facially mapped almost 1,000 identical and non-identical twins.
According to a further study by the University of Colorado, the height of your upper lip is another distinctive trait that is passed down.
That looks the case for model , 17, who has inherited her 47-year-old catwalk superstar mother Kate Moss’s full upper lip – as well as long nose-to-mouth furrow, giving her the same bee-stung look around her lower face.
THANDIE and NICO — hair texture
THE building blocks of hair are hair cells, which are linked together by a tough protein called keratin.
As new hair cells are born at the bottom of a follicle, they get added on to the growing strand of hair.
If the follicles are curved in shape, this means the hair can come out in a spiral shape, making it curly.
There are two versions of the hair type gene, curly and straight, which govern the shape of your hair follicle.
In the case of Dumbo star Nico Parker, 15, she has inherited the shape of her hair follicles from her 47-year-old mother, Westworld actress Thandie Newton rather than her straight-haired father, Ol Parker, 51 – director of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – giving her identical wavy hair to her stunning mum.
GWYNETH and APPLE — eye colour
SCIENTISTS know of six genes for eye colour, though there are probably more. These determine how much of the brown pigment eumelanin is in the irises.
The more they have, the darker your eyes. The fewer they have, the more light can pass through, giving the eyes a light blue shade.
A random mix of these six genes on conception will decide how much pigment – and therefore what colour – a baby has in its irises.
But all this is complicated by the fact that the genes for brown tend to dominate, while blue and green are recessive – or have a weaker effect.
In the case of 16-year-old Apple, her mother, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, 47, has blue as does her father, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, 43, allowing Apple to share her mother’s blue eye colour.
Most read in Fabulous
MADONNA and LOURDES — eyebrow shape
STUDIES of facial recognition software have found that the shape around the eyes is also one of the traits most likely to be passed down from parent to child.
If you need to use tweezers a lot to stop your eyebrows meeting in the middle, that’s also down to eight genetic variants, which you inherit from your parents.
Read More on The Sun
Pop star Madonna, 61, has had many iconic looks but she has long been known for the bushy eyebrows that crown her distinctive, almond-shaped eyes. Though, as with most women, her eyebrows have thinned through the years.
Both the thick eyebrows and shape around her eyes make Madonna’s 21-year-old daughter Lourdes Leon look almost identical to her mum when she was that age.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL [email protected]