Logan Marshall-Green has always had a lot in common with Tom Hardy. The same nose, pillowy pout, penchant for hipster face thatch – but, alas, not the mad energy that has made Hardy cinema’s loose cannon du jour.

This summer, however, Marshall-Green hit the big screen in Upgrade, a springy sci-fi film in which his paralysed character’s body is taken over by a rogue AI that gives him superpowers. Neat career move, you might say, if Hardy himself were not now starring in Venom, as an investigative journalist whose body is taken over by a rogue symbiote that gives him superpowers. Coincidence? Maybe. But it feels as if Upgrade pushes Marshall-Green fully into the realm of being the poor man’s Tom Hardy. It’s the latest example of the movie doppelganger, a phenomenon the industry seems compelled to repeat.

Bette Davis/Susan Hayward

Bette Davis (left) and Susan Hayward. Composite: REX/Shutterstock, TCD/ProdDB /Alamy

The doppelganger effect was an inevitable byproduct of the old studio system, which manufactured stars to fit certain types of roles (hence “typecasting”). If the top-of-the-line model couldn’t fit you into their schedule, or wasn’t contracted to your studio, why not draft in a substitute? There had been a few Bette Davis 2.0s, not least Barbara Stanwyck. But Susan Hayward, at Fox in the 50s, became the true successor to gigs where unconventional beauty and pugnacious wallop were called for. The game was up by 1961’s The Marriage Go Round, when Time magazine labelled her “a bargain-basement Bette Davis, whose lightest touch as a comedienne would stun a horse”. The pair, apparently admirers of each other’s work, played mother and daughter in 1964’s Where Love Has Gone. Maybe Hayward getting top billing was too much: Davis reportedly threw her wig at her co-star on the last day of shooting, screaming: “Thanks for nothing!”

Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield

Hollywood prefers blondes: Jayne Mansfield (left) and Marilyn Monroe. Composite: Alamy

The cynicism with which Hollywood operates is most obvious when star clones operate within the same generation. In the mid-50s, Jayne Mansfield was teed up by Fox as next on the blonde bombshell production line after Marilyn Monroe started to bridle beneath her contract and express frustration with her ditzy screen persona. Following the rock’n’roll-tinted vehicle The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), which topped Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the box office, the studio dubbed Mansfield “Monroe king-sized”. Thereafter, her rise was modelled closely on Monroe lines – 1957’s The Wayward Bus was a rehash of Monroe’s Bus Stop, from the year before. But a platinum dye job and Coke-bottle curves weren’t enough for Mansfield. The film doppelganger can’t just be a physical likeness; they must also be an attempt to rebottle the inner mojo of the original – a fool’s, or a film producer’s, endeavour. Mansfield was a passable comic actor, but Norma Jean’s boundless effervescence couldn’t be copied.

Jack Nicholson/Christian Slater

The eyebrows have it: Christian Slater (left) and Jack Nicholson. Composite: Alamy, Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

The only physical attribute Christian Slater really shared with big Jack was the perma-sarky eyebrows, but he didn’t let that stop him. From the moment he unleashed that vulpine leer in Heathers in what he later admitted was a “conscious channelling”, much of his early career was spent attempting to leech Nicholson’s bad-boy aura from 15 years previous.

Pump Up the Volume and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves showed he could also do the kind of earnestness that might have pushed him fully mainstream. But by the time real-life bad-boy antics had begun to derail Slater’s career in the mid-90s, no one could see beyond the bootleg tribute to Nicholson’s “devilish sneakiness”.

Nick Nolte/Gary Busey

Nick Nolte (left) and Gary Busey. Composite: Alamy, REX/Shutterstock

The best movie clones function as a kind of richly enjoyable parody of the original. With the likes of The Prince of Tides and Lorenzo’s Oil, Nick Nolte briefly flirted with matinee-idol leading-man territory. There was no danger of that happening for Gary Busey, his rattish brother from another mother. But Busey could supply pretty good cover for the weather-beaten, mildly unhinged street-cop types that were Nolte’s stock in trade as one of the 90s’ leading character actors. Trying to match 48 Hrs, Busey racks those nicotine-blasted tonsils to the max as the veteran agent partnering rookie Keanu Reeves in Point Break: “I was takin’ shrapnel in Khe Sanh when you were crappin’ in your hands and rubbin’ it on your face.”

Johnny Depp/Skeet Ulrich

Johnny Depp (left) and Skeet Ulrich. Composite: Alamy, Allstar

There were a few microseconds of opportunity in 1996 – mainly when he was toting a gun, covered in blood, at the end of Scream – when Skeet Ulrich looked as if he might give Johnny Depp a run for his money in the moony gothic charisma stakes. But mere physical facsimile wasn’t enough, and it never really happened for Ulrich. The window had been permanently shut and bolted by the time Chris Rock introduced Depp at the Video Music Awards in 1999 as the “rich man’s Skeet Ulrich”.

Leonardo DiCaprio/Emile Hirsch/Michael Pitt/Dane DeHaan

DiCopies: Leonardo DiCaprio (left) and Dane DeHaan Composite: Allstar/20th Centruy Fox, Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

DiCaprio himself followed closely in the footsteps of River Phoenix, even taking a role once earmarked for the older actor in The Basketball Diaries. But it was he who truly set the mould for the blond pretty boy that was the 1990s reaction to the overtly macho male leads of previous generations. Out of the DiCopies, Emile Hirsch got closest to the big league with 2008’s Speed Racer; Michael Pitt seems content to largely patrol the indie scrublands DiCaprio has long since abandoned; Dane DeHaan might even have come around late enough to star in Leo: The Pussy Posse Years, if anyone ever makes a biopic. All the while DiCaprio was slowly filling out, losing the delectable boyishness that made him a heartthrob, but finally gaining a face to fit his roles – an evolution that has ensured he remains one of the last bankable A-listers.

Matt Damon/Jesse Plemons

Matt Damon (left) and Jesse Plemons. Composite: REX/Shutterstock, Alamy

Sometimes destiny is writ in your face. In Plemons’ case, he looks so much like the 21st-century’s No 1 cinema everyman that one of his first big film roles, in 2000’s All the Pretty Horses, was playing the young Matt Damon. To give Plemons his due, he is doing a decent job of fighting his destiny: while his film résumé has a Damon-esque salt-of-the-earth look to it, he has managed to make his mark on television with major roles in Breaking Bad and Fargo. If anyone comes calling with a Bourne sequel offer, let’s hope his manager hits the bin pedal pronto.

Venom is out now.