It’s one of the most unforgettable moments in cinematic history: two identical girls in blue dresses, hand in hand, standing silently in a blood-soaked hallway. “Come and play with us, Danny,” they whisper in unison, and with that, a horror legacy was born.
The Grady twins from The Shining may have only appeared in a single scene, but their chilling presence left an indelible mark on popular culture.
Nearly 45 years since Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece first terrified audiences, the real-life twins behind the haunting image, Lisa and Louise Burns, have carved out lives far removed from the Hollywood spotlight, but remain figures in the horror community.
Now in their mid-50s, Lisa and Louise are unrecognizable as the twins who haunted young Danny Torrance in the halls of the Overlook Hotel.
The Shining Twins
And although they’ve long since stepped away from acting, the duo continue to embrace their spooky past, sharing updates and fond memories with fans on their joint Facebook page, The Shining Twins.
“Every day felt like we’d been invited to a very exclusive party,” they once said in an interview with Daily Mail. “And we were the youngest, luckiest people to be there.”
© FacebookThe pair were just 11 years old when they filmed their scene for The Shining — and despite the film’s dark themes, the memories they hold from that time are anything but terrifying. “Stanley [Kubrick] wanted us on set every single day,” Louise recalled. “So between scenes we would play with Danny and Jack.”
As the girls have often pointed out, Jack Nicholson was nothing like the terrifying Jack Torrance he portrayed on screen. Instead, they remember him as a warm and protective figure who often looked out for them on set, even taking on a fatherly role during filming breaks.
Both Lisa and Louise speak fondly of their time working on the film. They remember Shelley Duvall as gentle and kind, and Stanley Kubrick, often described as a meticulous perfectionist, as someone who took the time to get every detail just right.
© Getty ImagesAnd detail mattered. They recall that it took nearly a week to film the now-iconic hallway scene where the twins appear to Danny, both alive and later in a flash of gory aftermath. “There was only one set of our costumes,” they explained. “So the blood-drenched scene had to be done in one take.”
Despite its relatively modest box office performance at the time, The Shining went on to become one of the most influential horror films of all time. Its legacy — and that unforgettable image of the twins — continues to reverberate through popular culture, especially each Halloween when fans recreate their eerie look with striking precision.
From The Simpsons to Family Guy, parodies of their scene have become a television tradition. Even The Angry Birds Movie featured a cheeky nod to Lisa and Louise’s look, with two green birds dressed in matching blue frocks waiting behind a creaking door. Pinterest boards and YouTube tutorials dedicated to their costumes go viral every autumn, as a new generation falls under the eerie spell of the Grady twins.
© GettyWhere are the twins now?
The role may have seemed like a springboard to further film work, but the Burns twins chose to walk a different path entirely. Lisa became a lawyer, while Louise pursued a career in science and is now a published academic. Both maintain a passion for film and the horror genre, but never chased stardom after their big-screen debut.
That hasn’t stopped them from embracing their cult status. The twins frequently appear at horror conventions and fan events, where they delight attendees with stories from behind the scenes and pose with fans in recreations of their famous hallway moment.
In 2023, they travelled to Comic Con in Northern Ireland, where they took part in a panel discussion about the making of The Shining. There, they revealed that they were cast during an open call, and that the film’s adaptation took creative liberties — in Stephen King’s original novel, the Grady sisters aren’t actually twins but two girls aged eight and ten.
It was Kubrick’s decision to make them twins, and it proved to be a stroke of genius. The eerie symmetry of Lisa and Louise, dressed in powder-blue dresses with white knee socks and deadpan expressions, instantly seared itself into the minds of viewers everywhere. It’s no wonder the image has endured for nearly half a century.
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