Christian Cousins, Child Actor in Kindergarten Cop, Dies at 43
Christian Cousins, who shared the role of Dominic in the 1990 film Kindergarten Cop with his twin brother Joey, has died at 43. His brother Jonas Roeser announced the death on Instagram and said Cousins had been suffering from liver disease.
Christian Cousins, the child actor who played Dominic in the 1990 film Kindergarten Cop, has died at age 43, his brother Jonas Roeser said in an Instagram post. Roeser said Cousins had been suffering from liver disease before his death.
Roeser captioned a carousel of photos of Cousins with the words: "It's hard to share that my brother, Christian Cousins, has passed away."
A brother's tribute
Roeser said he did not meet Christian and his twin brother, Joseph "Joey" Cousins, until his college years. The twins are his brothers through his biological father, he explained. They grew up in California while he was in Washington.
"Before that, I grew up watching them on television in Knots Landing and the lead role of Dominic in Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger," Roeser wrote.
Those parts, he said, were only a small piece of how he would remember his brother. "He was a character, full of passion and energy, with big stories and even bigger dreams."
Roeser said Cousins "had been very sick" before he died. "It brings me comfort to believe he is now in heaven with his mother, free from the pain he was carrying," he wrote. He closed with: "Rest easy, Christian. I hope your soul is at rest and that you've found peace. You are my brother and you will be missed."
Child actor career
Christian and Joey were born in 1983 in Orange County, California. They won their first acting role, in the fantasy drama series Highway to Heaven, at the age of five.
The twins later appeared in almost 60 episodes of the soap opera Knots Landing, playing Bobby Gibson Ewing between 1987 and 1992. They also shared the part of Dominic in Kindergarten Cop, the 1990 film starring Schwarzenegger.
Their final acting credit was the 1995 movie Twin Sitters. The brothers then stepped away from acting.
Why twins played Dominic
In 2020, the twins reunited with Schwarzenegger and the Kindergarten Cop cast. Christian explained then how the brothers came to split the role.
"On the first interview with my brother, they knew that there was going to be a lot of limitations because of how many kids were involved in the movie," he recalled. Child labor rights limit how many hours young performers can work, he said, and the Dominic character needed a lot of screen time. Twins were the likely answer.
