Christian Cousins (left) and Joseph Cousins in 1989. Lorimar Television / Courtesy Everett Collection Christian Cousins, who with his identical twin brother shared roles as youngsters on the CBS primetime soap Knots Landing and in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Kindergarten Cop, has died. He was 43.
Cousins died Oct. 20 after a battle with liver disease, his half-brother Jonas Roeser announced on Instagram. “He was a character, full of passion and energy, with big stories and even bigger dreams,” he wrote.
Christian and twin brother Joseph were not yet 4 when they first appeared on Knots Landing as Bobby Ewing during the show’s ninth season in 1987, and they wound up on 57 episodes through 1992.
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Bobby, who had a twin sister, Betsy, was named by Joan Van Ark’s Valene Ewing after the character played by Patrick Duffy on Dallas was run over by a car driven by Morgan Brittany’s Katherine Wentworth. (Knots Landing was a spinoff of Dallas, and producers there were fond of series crossovers and piggybacking off its Lorimar sibling.)
In Kindergarten Cop (1990), directed by Ivan Reitman, Christian and Joseph portrayed Dominic, one of the students taught by Schwarzenegger’s John Kimble, an L.A. detective working undercover at an elementary school. Dominic’s mom is played by Penelope Ann Miller, and he winds up as a hostage.
Christian Michail Cousins and Joseph were born on March 17, 1983, and raised in Orange County, California.
After embarking on Knots Landing — their character was introduced on a November 1984 episode in which Val gives birth to Bobby and Betsy and then they’re kidnapped, resulting in a season-long storyline — Christian and Joseph shared roles on episodes of Father Dowling Mysteries, Eerie, Indiana and Intruders and in Critters 3 (1991).
They played twins named Hope and Faith on a 1988 episode of Highway to Heaven and brothers named Bradley and Steven in Twin Sitters (1995).
Christian appeared as his own character on episodes of Empty Nest, Wings and Dream On.
Joseph, meanwhile, went it alone as Bobby on another 30 of so episodes of Knots Landing through its 14th-season conclusion in May 1993, then returned for the 1997 reunion movie Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac.
After acting, Christian worked as an executive in a furniture business and co-owned a CBD business.
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