10 Actors Who Appeared In Movies By Trickery

8. Penélope Cruz - Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Thankfully not all of these cinematic sleights of hand were mired in tragedy, as shortly after Penélope Cruz started shooting her role as Jack Sparrow's (Johnny Depp) former lover Angelica in the fourth Pirates movie, she learned that she was pregnant with her first child.

The producers were put in a tough spot as the swashbuckling role required a great deal of physical activity, and let's face it, any studio that dared to fire a pregnant woman would (rightly) get torn asunder online.

Rather than recast the part and re-shoot material that was already in the can, Cruz had a novel solution to the problem - hire her sister Monica as a stand-in.

As the above image makes abundantly clear, Monica Cruz is the absolute spitting image of her A-list sis, and to make the deal even sweeter, she was also trained as a dancer and had sword-fighting experience.

Monica ended up performing almost all of Angelica's action scenes and also much of the character's coverage that didn't require her face to be visible, allowing director Rob Marshall to cleverly cover-up Penélope's fast-growing baby bump.

The end result is basically seamless, and even if you're really looking, it's virtually impossible to tell where one sister ends and the other begins.