Lisa and Louise Burns from ‘The Shining’ – today, work, pictures

Lisa and Louise were only 12 years old when Stanley Kubrick cast them in The Shining. The classic horror movie was released in 1980.

Stanley Kubrick explained in an interview about the film, “I’ve always been interested in ESP and the paranormal. In addition to the scientific experiments which have been conducted suggesting that we are just short of conclusive proof of its existence, I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of opening a book at the exact page we’re looking for, or thinking of a friend a moment before they ring on the telephone.

“But The Shining didn’t originate from any particular desire to do a film about this. The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley, of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read.”

“It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: ‘Jack must be imagining these things because he’s crazy.’ This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing.”

The twin girls appearing in the movie was an accident as Kubrick never intended on using twin sisters in the movie at all.

It was their first time acting and if you have watched the movie, you will know that they did well.

After their first movie, the girls wanted to attend acting schools but they were turned down by many as they were dubbed as professionals. They decided to chase other career paths.

“When I was younger it was a huge dream of mine to be a movie star like Judy Garland or Greta Garbo, real movie stars,” Louise recalled.

“I went to an audition for RADA and they said they couldn’t accept me because I’d been in the movie, that made me a professional actress and they didn’t accept professionals. The woman wouldn’t even audition me and that was a huge knock for me, so I decided to be a scientist instead.”

“It was hard to get seen because of that,” Lisa added. “We would probably have had more luck if we’d just lied.”

The Grady twins decided to change their career paths, Louise went on to become a published scientist while Lisa became a lawyer.