The real-life facts about York's strangest twins, Greta and Freda Chaplin

Tuesday, 17 June 2025 17:02

By Maxine Gordon

The real-life facts about York's famous twins, Greta and Freda Chaplin, who have inspired a Hollywood film

YORK'S most unusual twin sisters are the inspiration for a new Hollywood film.

As reported in The Press last week, the lives of Freda and Greta Chaplin are being dramatised in a new movie with the twins being played by real-life Hollywood sisters Rooney and Kate Mara.

The Chaplin twins not only looked identical, they wore the same clothes, spoke and moved in unison, and have been the subject of many media reports and two documentaries.

Here is our look back in words and photos at the real life story of the Chaplin twins which have inspired the new Hollywood film, Bucking Fastard, currently in production in Ireland and Slovenia.

1. Freda and Greta Chaplin were born in April 1943 and lived and grew up in Tang Hall, York. They first rose to notoriety in the early 1980s when they were prosecuted at York Magistrates' Court for breach of the peace for harassing a local truck driver, Ken Iveson. The twins were bizarre mirror images of each other. They were inseparable and at the trial would shout out together to plead their innocence. They were found guilty and jailed for one month.

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