"The Parent Trap"'s 'TieDye Girl' Was 'Bullied' After the Movie Came Out. 26 Years Later, She's Reclaiming the Role (Exclusive) Angela AndaloroJuly 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM Disney+; Courtney Gilberto l @roseandmarigoldphoto Courtney as Nicole (left) and today Courtney Gilberto played Nicole, who fans cam...
- - - "The Parent Trap"'s 'Tie-Dye Girl' Was 'Bullied' After the Movie Came Out. 26 Years Later, She's Reclaiming the Role (Exclusive)
Angela AndaloroJuly 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Disney+; Courtney Gilberto l @roseandmarigoldphoto
Courtney as Nicole (left) and today
Courtney Gilberto played Nicole, who fans came to know by her nickname "tie-dye girl," in The Parent Trap
The role was Gilberto's only time acting in a film, but she tells PEOPLE that it came with difficult times for her
Today, Gilberto has discovered how many fans online appreciated the character — and even has fans in her own daughters
A one-time child actress rediscovered her love for The Parent Trap after decades of trying to distance herself from the film.
Courtney Gilberto was a New York tween who went from competitive dance to modeling, later branching out into commercials, which led to auditioning for even bigger roles. One day, Gilberto went in to audition for a Disney project, but thought it was a long shot compared to some of the other jobs she'd tried for.
"If you went into an audition, you'd see the same 100 to 200 girls every single time. At that point, I was getting older and had a feeling it wasn't going to happen for me," she exclusively tells PEOPLE. "But I went in and read lines. From the start, I read for Nicole, for tie-dye girl."
"There were multiple callbacks. You'd go in and audition, and they'd narrow it down. At one point, my agent was like, 'It's not going to work out,'" she recalls. "I was tall, and when they did a height check, it kept coming up that my height wouldn't match up with Lindsay [Lohan's]. Then I randomly got a call saying the casting director wanted me to come in."
Disney+
Courtney Gilberto in "The Parent Trap"
During the callback, Gilberto did some improv about life and girlhood in the late '90s, pretending to chat with her best friend and discuss their summer plans. Hearing no news at first, she put it out of her mind. It wasn't until a family vacation in Upstate New York months later that they finally got an answer.
"This was before cell phones, so my mom kept getting pages like on her beeper from my agent, and she was telling her that I got the role, so we ended up having to come back," she remembers.
"They said like 650 girls had auditioned for it. So it was a nice win in my book," she adds.
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In the 1998 film, Nicole appears at Camp Walden breezy and at ease, expertly navigating the pile of duffle bags before helping Lohan's character, Hallie, do the same.
"I was this little Italian girl from New York, and they really wanted to play into that," Gilberto says. "They kept my hair long and straight. They really did embrace that as my character."
Gilberto remembers hitting it off with Lohan on set in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., and becoming "really good friends."
Disney+
Campers at Camp Walden
"We got along really well. Both of our families were from New York. We hung out all the time on set. Our families would go out to dinner together. We would hang out," she recalls.
The shoot took around two months. Gilberto then returned home, but would fly back to Hollywood to do studio work months later. During that time, she and Lindsay were still in touch. However, without the technology of today, the two eventually fell out of contact.
"We'd get into these normal little 11-year-old friend fights, but we were really good friends. I want to say that up until just before the movie came out, we were," Gilberto says.
"But there was no social media or cell phones," she adds. "We weren't online like that yet, in that sense, so we didn't really have the option to stay in touch on our own. And Lindsay's mom was really focused on making her a star."
Disney+
Lindsay Lohan and Courtney Gilberto as Hallie and Nicole
Although Lohan was on the path to stardom, Gilberto says she "didn't really talk about it."
"When we went out in the town, we never really told people what we were there for. Lindsay was so chill and so sweet," Gilberto recalls.
When the film came out, Lohan's fame skyrocketed. And while tie-dye girl's breezy way of being made her a beloved secondary character, Gilberto didn't feel a lot of love from her peers at home.
"I was in the fifth or sixth grade, and I was just so excited. I didn't see it as like bragging or anything like that. I was just excited that I got to leave school and go to Hollywood and film a movie, and I was excited to tell people about it," she says.
However, she ended up being "picked on and got bullied so bad about it, really up until like high school."
"It was an interesting place to be as an 11-year-old," she admits.
Disney+
"The Parent Trap" (1998)
Gilberto tried to move on, especially after her family moved from New York to Pennsylvania.
"My family moved during my freshman year of high school, and I didn't tell anybody about it. It was this little secret fact that I had about myself," she says. "But when a friend of mine was visiting from New York, she ended up telling my friend group, and they told a bunch of people."
It's only in recent years that Gilberto realized how much the character was appreciated after snippets from the beloved movie went viral online.
"A client sent me a TikTok, and I clicked through the hashtag, and it brought tears to my eyes," she says. "I love that I was a positive role model at that age. It's just so crazy to me because that wasn't my shared experience, but it's made me feel so good since."
Disney+
Courtney Gilberto as Nicole, Lindsay Lohan as Hallie and Maggie Emma Thomas as Zoe
Gilberto never considered going back to acting after The Parent Trap, explaining that the disappointment of being repeatedly rejected was too much to bear at a vulnerable time in her life.
"I think I just became more self-aware and. I knew that I was being judged, and I knew that I was hearing no, all the time, and it wasn't making me feel good," she explains. "It was a decision I made for myself, and I'm really glad."
Today, Gilberto lives in Kansas City, Mo., with her husband and four kids — three girls, ages 11, 10, and 7, as well as a 3-year-old son. She owns a photography business, which led to her becoming a certified postpartum doula after getting into birth photography.
"I help families with whatever they need in the days after they get home from the hospital. A lot of times, it's helping new parents who need a little extra help," she shares.
Now that her daughters are old enough to watch The Parent Trap, they've come to be excited by the fact that their mom was part of it all.
"About two years ago, they were watching it and they were like, 'Wait a second, that's Mom.' It was a really special moment," Gilberto shares. "Now it's funny because my oldest daughter will literally go anywhere, at the most random times, and tell people. I think it's just fun for them because all of their friends have seen it, and their friends' parents think it's cool. It makes them proud."
The girls got in on the fun in a recent photoshoot that Gilberto shared on Instagram, showing them in little Camp Walden uniforms posing at a campsite.
"We watched [The Parent Trap] randomly at a neighbor's house, and Madeline, my oldest, was talking about wanting to take pictures," she explains. "We thought about it for a while, and I've done photo shoots for my clients in that vicinity, where the little cabins are. I wasn't sure because it seemed so silly, but they really wanted to do it."
A shop in St. Louis, Daffodilly, also helped out, sending Camp Walden T-shirts for Gilberto and her kids.
"So since I had those to have fun and play with, we went for it. They were just so excited. They wanted to act out every scene," she says.
After sharing the photos on Instagram, fans of the film were shocked to see how much Gilberto's daughter resembles her in the film.
"She loves it. She got an iPhone for her 11th birthday, and she has all of these screenshots of me and from the movie she puts next to pictures of her. She's texting her friends like, 'I look so much like my mom,'" Gilberto shares.
"She's probably never [going to] admit that because I'm also the least cool person to her, but it's so sweet."
Courtney Gilberto and her eldest daughter, Madeline
Disney+ Courtney as Nicole, a.k.a. Tie-Dye Girl
Courtney Gilberto l @roseandmarigoldphoto Courntey's daughter, Madeline
Seeing the character through new eyes has helped her fall in love with tie-dye girl all over again.
"I realized there were actually kids out there who loved it and looked up to me, which feels weird to say. But I just got a bigger picture," she says.
"Just because I was stuck in a school with a bunch of kids who gave me a hard time doesn't mean that it wasn't cool or exciting to other people who liked who I played as a character and me as a person."
Gilberto says she is "really grateful for all of the love" she's been given from people online, some of whom have even become her "clients or friends."
"I really love that. It's like TikTok and Instagram have made this a really positive experience, and I've gotten to meet a lot of really friendly and fun people from it," she adds.
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