Tom Brady, Paris Hilton and more stars can’t get enough of their furry friends, so much so that they end up cloning their dogs to keep their tails wagging a little longer.
Brady revealed in November 2025 that his new pup, Junie, is a clone of the late pitbull mix he shared with ex-wife Gisele Bündchen. (Brady and Bündchen confirmed in 2023 that their beloved dog, Lua, had died.)
“I love my animals,” Brady shared in a statement released by Colossal Biosciences, a startup in which the NFL alum invests. “They mean the world to me and my family. A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family’s elderly dog before she passed.”
Colossal had recently acquired animal cloning firm Viagen Pets and Equine at the time.
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“Using groundbreaking technology to advance animal conservation, Viagen’s team has successfully cloned 15 species,” the firm said in a press release. “They have also cultured and bio banked more than 40 unique species including 22 threatened or endangered species such as the White rhino, Black rhino, Florida bonneted bat, Perdido beach mouse and Indiana bat. These achievements firmly establish Viagen as the global leader in animal cloning, setting unmatched benchmarks for innovation, efficiency and conservation impact.”
While cloning animals has become more common in recent years, the practice isn’t without controversy. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) acknowledged in a 2025 statement that there are serious “welfare concerns.”
“Reports on the health and condition of mammalian animals produced by cloning have indicated a variety of anatomical and physiological problems,” a website statement read. “It is difficult to document fully the consequences of cloning or bioengineered applications of companion animals since many of these activities fall outside the framework of publicly funded and regulated research programs.”
Regardless of the debate, see which celebrities have gotten their beloved pets cloned:
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton surprised mom Kathy Hilton on a 2023 episode of Paris in Love by debuting late chihuahua Diamond Baby’s two clones, appropriately named Diamond and Baby, hidden under a blanket. (Paris previously told her mom that she welcomed son Phoenix in the same way.)
“The two little twins that were cloned, they stay together,” Kathy exclusively told Us Weekly in January 2024. “They walk together, they kind of huddle and lay into each other like twins.”
Barbra Streisand
EGOT winner Barbra Streisand loved her dog Samantha (affectionately nicknamed Sammie) so much that she cloned the Coton de Tulear twice. Before Sammie’s death in 2017, Streisand had Viagen take cells from the canine’s out and stomach, which she used to create Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett.
“They have different personalities,” Streisand told Variety in 2018. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have [Samantha’s] brown eyes and seriousness.”
Tom Brady
Tom Brady revealed in November 2025 that cloning Lua allowed his family “a second chance” with the late pup. (Brady shares two children, Benjamin and Vivian, with Gisele Bündchen and eldest son Jack with ex Bridget Moynahan.)
Barry Diller
Billionaire businessman Barry Diller, who is married to fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg, admitted to the Irish Times in June 2025 that he made five “daughters” of his late Jack Russell terrier, Shannon, who died in 2014.
“They’re all little Irish girls,” he told the outlet of cloning his first dog. “[Shannon] was a super dog. She was just the loveliest, most adventurous — she was a wondrous little animal.”
For more on these celebrity pet owners, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
