Olivia O’Brien is a well-known musician, while Dylan O’Brien has developed a career as an actor, but are the two related?
Though they share the same last name, it is not thought that Olivia O’Brien and Dylan O’Brien are related. Olivia comes from the west, hailing from California, while Dylan grew up in New Jersey.
Read more about Olivia O’Brien and Dylan O’Brien below, and find out more about whether the two are related.
Olivia O’Brien
Olivia O’Brien was born in Thousand Oaks, California, though the family relocated when she was just a year old.
She says she had a ‘Terrible time growing up,” which only worsened when she began high school. When she began experimenting with fashion, her peers would mock her.
As a teen, she began creating musical covers and sharing them online. “I just pressed record and played it on my piano, and uploaded it immediately on Soundcloud,” she recalls.
Unfortunately, her early experiments with music gave bullies yet more ammunition, and she received a negative response from her peers. She still sometimes receives trolling comments from those in her high school, though she approaches this positively.
“People are mean, and now they’re also just jealous,” she says.
Her Soundcloud covers were noticed by Gnash, a producer, and the two began corresponding. She sent him her track ‘i hate u, i love u’ and he invited her to collaborate with him.
“With i hate u, i love u’ I just wrote it on the piano, there’s not much production on that song anyway, I just wrote it in my room,” she explains.
The track became a breakout single, reaching number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Dylan O’Brien
Dylan O’Brien was born in 1991 to parents Lisa and Patrick. He was born in New York and the family lived in New Jersey until he was 12, when they relocated to California.
Both parents worked in the entertainment industry, with his father a camera operator, and his mother the manager of a theatre school.
As a teen, he began posting videos on YouTube and was soon approached by an online show, who offered him the chance to work with them. He also worked on several short movies.
Outside of acting, he showed some interest in music and was part of a band, playing drums.
In California, he considered an academic career at Syracuse University but found that acting was his true passion and therefore did not complete his studies.
In 2010, O’Brien began appearing in the MTV show ‘Teen Wolf’ in the role of Stiles Stalinski. The following year, he appeared in the movie ‘High Road’.
He began to appear in movies regularly, with roles in ‘The First Time’ and ‘The Internship’.
In 2014, he played Thomas, a lead character in ‘Maze Runner’. The movie achieved huge success, and had a follow-up, ‘Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials’.
Combined, the two movies made over $180 million in US box office sales.
While filming a stunt scene for ‘The Scorch Trials’, O’Brien suffered an injury. He was left with a fractured bone in his face and a significant head injury.
The recovery process was grueling, both physically and mentally, though he was able to return to acting.
During his career, O’Brien has worked alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Mark Wahlberg, Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn.
Are the Two Related?
Though Olivia O’Brien and Dylan O’Brien share a surname, it’s not thought that there is a familial relationship between the two.
The two could be mistaken for siblings, with an eight-year age gap between them, however, this is not the case. Dylan actually has an older sister named Julia.
Olivia, too, has an older sister who is named Grace. Though they both spent some of their early years in California, Dylan is originally from New Jersey.
The surname is relatively common in the United States and is thought to denote Irish ancestry.