With a shared last name and similar professions, it’s not surprising that people are wondering if Lake Bell and Kristen Bell might be cousins, or even sisters. But are they actually related?
There is no evidence to suggest that Lake Bell, born in New York, and Kristen Bell, hailing from Michigan, are in any way related. Though they are both actresses of a similar age, they do not have a common parent or family history, meaning their last name is the only thing they share.
Read on to learn more about the American actresses and whether there’s any connection between the pair.
Lake Bell
Lake Siegel Bell was born on March 24, 1979 in New York City, to Robin Bell and Harvey Siegel and began her extensive acting career in 2002 with a role in film ‘Speakeasy’.
She’s earned acclaim as a comedy actress, with roles in films such as ‘What Happens in Vegas’, ‘No Strings Attached’, and ‘It’s Complicated, and TV roles in ‘Boston Legal’, ‘Children’s Hospital’, and ‘Bless this Mess’.
She had her directorial debut in 2010 with her short film ‘Worst Enemy’, which went to the Sundance Film Festival, and has since directed a number of other films and TV episodes.
On being successful as a writer and director, Lake said in an interview, “if you have a strong voice and you have a strong work ethic and belief in yourself, then I feel like that’s a really good place to start. But you can’t even afford to have any laziness”.
Interestingly, outside of the world of film and TV Lake, whose Dad owns a race track, has also had an automotive column, ‘Test Drive’, for The Hollywood Reporter. Lake said of the appointment, “I’m just thankful The Hollywood Reporter has been so generously willing to enable my secret addiction.”
Kristen Bell
Kristen is just over a year younger than Lake, and was born on July 18, 1980 in Detroit, Michigan. Her parents, Lorelai and Tom, divorced when she was two years old and she has two stepsisters from her father’s second marriage, and two half-brothers and two half-sisters from her mother’s second marriage.
Kristen’s legendary career began on Broadway, but she soon turned to screen acting. She had a handful of guest roles in TV shows but struggled to find a recurring role initially.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Kristen opened up, “I would get feedback from an audition like ‘Well, you’re not pretty enough to play the pretty girl, but you’re not quirky enough or weird enough to play the weird girl’”.
Since landing the role of Veronica Mars in the 2004 series of the same name, Kristen’s career has constantly been on the up and up, and her film and TV credits include the ‘Frozen’ franchise, ‘Gossip Girl’, and ‘The Good Place’.
Outside of acting, Kristen is known for being hilarious and relatable, particularly when it comes to parenting, and the actress has a web series called ‘Momsplaining’, produced with Ellen DeGeneres.
Mutual connections
Whilst there’s no evidence that Kristen Bell and Lake Bell are related, they do have a mutual connection, have definitely crossed paths and are even friends.
Lake Bell stars alongside Kristen Bell’s husband, Dax Shepard, in the sitcom ‘Bless this Mess’, but Lake confesses that they actually met at pre-school:
“Dax and I were fellow parents who dropped off our kids at the same preschool. We were friendly; I was friendly with his wife. He expresses it that we were the only actors at that drop off, so we’d some kind of familial nod, like ‘you do acting, too.’”
Though definitely not related, since working together the pair and their significant others have become firm friends, with Lake affirming “we’ve become super tight”.
Watch Kristen and Lake Bell together on The Ellen Show in the hilarious YouTube video below.