Meet Rachael Leigh Cook’s 2 Kids! All About Charlotte and Theodore

Rachael Leigh Cook is all that when it comes to parenting her two children: Charlotte and Theodore.

The She’s All That star and her ex-husband, The Vampire Diaries actor Daniel Gillies, became parents almost a decade after tying the knot.

Cook and Gillies welcomed their daughter, Charlotte, in 2013 followed by the birth of their son, Theodore, in 2015. “Having children forces you to be present. I’m in awe all the time,” Gillies told the Huffington Post in 2014.

Upon becoming a mom, Cook shared how her life had changed, including that because she naturally prioritizes her children, she missed “feeling like a good friend.”

“I feel like I’m pretty flaky right now because my kids come first, second, third, everything,” Cook told PEOPLE in 2017. She also opened up about the struggle she experienced when it came to being a working mother.

“My kids make me want to almost cry every time I leave because they’re now old enough to say, ‘No, Mom, don’t go, don’t do work,’ ” she previously told PEOPLE. “‘Work’ is a very bad buzzword around our house, because they know that it means that Mom or Dad is leaving.”

Cook and Gillies — who divorced in 2021 — co-parent their children, coming together as a family for key events including celebrating Halloween together.

Here is everything to know about Rachael Leigh Cook’s two kids:  Charlotte and Theodore.

Charlotte Easton Gillies, 11

Cook and Gillies welcomed their daughter, Charlotte Easton, on Sept. 28, 2013.

“it’s a girl. the tiny new empress of my everything. she’s immaculate. we’re delirious,” Gillies posted on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after her birth.

Four months earlier, shortly before the pair’s nine-year wedding anniversary, Cook and Gillies announced they were expecting their first child. Cook — who played the role of special agent Kate Moretti on TNT’s Perception — was filming the second season of the show while pregnant with her daughter.

When Charlotte was a toddler, Cook opened up about motherhood and revealed some hilarious yet unexpected moments that accompanied parenting a child that age.

“We were in an Uber, going to the airport, and Charlotte, my daughter, goes ‘Mom, can I see your breasts?’ I’m like, ‘Definitely not. Definitely not, especially right now,’ ” Cook told PEOPLE, while laughing, in 2017. “I didn’t say ‘Please don’t say that again,’ but I was really thinking it. Man, would that have been an interesting ride.”

At 7 years old, Charlotte made her red carpet debut for the 2021 premiere of Netflix’s He’s All That, the gender-flipped reboot of the iconic 1999 rom-com that catapulted Cook’s career.

Cook — who starred in both — was inspired by her daughter to take the role of Padgett Sawyer’s mom in the Netflix remake after watching the original She’s All That with her daughter.

“I tried to watch it again recently with my oldest, who’s 9, and I felt a little appropriately concerned about some of the messaging,” she told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2022. “There’s some really conspicuous body-shaming comments and things like that that just wouldn’t fly in the movies today,” she added. “It was important to sort of change that narrative.”

In addition to watching movies together, Cook has also opened up about some of her preteen’s hobbies and interests. For her 9th birthday, Charlotte celebrated with a limousine ride and trip to the Cheesecake Factory with friends, and for Halloween that same year, she wanted to dress up as “something scary” — Roblox character Jenna the Killer.

“I was like, ‘That sounds aggressive. You just turned 9, but okay. I’m not getting in trouble around here. Be a nice kid,’ ” Cook told PEOPLE jokingly in 2022, adding, “But no, it’s funny.”

Theodore Vigo Sullivan Gillies, 9

Cook and Gillies welcomed their son, Theodore Vigo, on April 4, 2015.

They first announced they were expecting their second child three months after their daughter’s first birthday. “We’re as happy as we were surprised by this wonderful news! We haven’t slept since 2013 and welcome advice from all parents who survived Two Under Two,” the couple said in a statement at the time.

After his birth, it took the second-time parents several days to choose their newborn’s moniker.

“We just couldn’t settle on a name because it’s such an important decision,” Gillies told PEOPLE. He added that he used the nicknames “sweetheart,” “raisin” and even “calcified alien” for their son in the meantime.

“Even after he was born we couldn’t determine whether or not he was Theodore or Vigo, because he was just so beat up from [being born],” he added. “Some might say he should be Vigo because of Viggo Mortensen, kind of battle-scarred. But there was something so adorable about him.”

“In the end, he got both names: Theodore, Vigo, and my wife likes Sullivan,” he shared. “He was born on the fourth [day] of the fourth [month], and I said, ‘Let’s give him four names. Four seems to be his number.’ ”

Theodore’s arrival made a then-18-month-old Charlotte a big sister.

“… [Charlotte] is a very sweet, older sister to him and she’s day-by-day becoming more and more … demonstrative,” Gillies told Entertainment Tonight in 2017 about the sibling dynamic.

“She’ll be really sweet to my son and be like, ‘Look, Daddy! Look at how great I’m being,’ so that she can receive the reward later on, which is inevitably that I have to play her episodes of Dora the Explorer,” he added.

Even though Cook and Gillies had experience under their belt with the newborn phase, Gillies admitted that each child brought a different experience. “You think the experience is going to be identical, but it’s just not,” Gillies told PEOPLE in 2015 of their son, who was nearly 3 months old at the time.

Gillies said Theodore was “just all smiles” as a baby, while Cook revealed, “I finally got a cuddler!”

Cook has shared glimpses of Theodore’s life over the years, posting snaps of his handiwork in 2021, including a multi-use craft he worked on for his mom when he was 6 years old that doubled as a purse or a helmet.

She has also revealed that Theodore, who along with his sister, joined her on the red carpet for the premiere of Rennervations in 2023, was spooked by the first movie she did specifically for him and Charlotte called Spirit Halloween.

“I was really excited to show it to them because they really wanted me to do the movie,” she told PEOPLE in 2022. “And I know that every actor, [like] myself, in their 40s is like, ‘I made this one for the kids.’ But this is my first ‘I made one for the kids’ moment.”

While her daughter thought the film “was awesome,” Theodore “said it was a little scary, but he’s 7,” Cook shared at the time.