Trailer
Plot summary
Nicholas Parker grows wine in California's Napa Valley, and Elizabeth James designs wedding gowns in Britain. They marry aboard a cruise ship, and after their twin daughters are born the marriage ends. Elizabeth takes Annie home to London, and Nick raises Hallie at his vineyard, so neither girl knows she has a sister. Nearly twelve years later both are sent to a summer camp in Maine. A fencing match brings them face to face, and the two are startled by how alike they look.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Parent Trap (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- More than 1,500 young actresses submitted audition tapes for the dual roles of Hallie and Annie, with Meyers looking for a little Diane Keaton. Mara Wilson, Scarlett Johansson, Michelle Trachtenberg and Jena Malone were considered before Lindsay Lohan was cast, Malone turning the roles down repeatedly.
- Director Nancy Meyers made the film with her then-husband Charles Shyer as producer and co-writer, shortly before their divorce. The twins are named after the couple's two daughters, who both have cameo appearances, and the film is dedicated to Hallie Meyers-Shyer.
- Motion control photography let Lindsay Lohan play both twins. Meyers, using the technique in her directorial debut, recalled that it was complicated and she really did not know how to do it: everything had to be done twice, and on children's hours.
- In March 2025 Quaid said there had been some talk of a sequel before Richardson's passing in 2009, but that it would be impossible to do now: I don't think we'd have the heart for it. We all still miss Natasha.
- The camp counselors Marva Kulp Sr. and Marva Kulp Jr. are named after Nancy Kulp, the actress who played the camp counselor Miss Grunecker in the 1961 film, and the Colonel Bogey March from that film is heard again when Hallie and Annie are marched to the Isolation Cabin.
- Lindsay Lohan's brother plays a boy at Camp Walden who did not realize he was going to an all-girls camp, credited as Lost Boy at Camp, and her mother and two siblings all appear in uncredited cameos at the airport in London.
