ASHLEY OLSEN - OLSEN TWINS SEPARATE

Teen actresses MARY-KATE and ASHLEY OLSEN are going their separate ways - the twins have now decided to live apart.

Pals of the 18-year-old beauties tell America's STAR magazine Mary-Kate will move out of their New York City apartment and into a spacious loft of her own.

A source says, "Mary-Kate and Ashley want to do the independent thing and live on their own. They're twins, and I think they just want to find their own identities. They don't want to be identified as the same person."

While the twins' representative MICHAEL PAGNOTTA has declined to comment on the stars' living arrangements, he insists there isn't a rift between the pair.

He explains, 'They do a lot of things together and a lot of things individually. They're good friends; all this rift stuff is nonsense."

One pal says Mary-Kate will be moving away from the TriBeCa home she shares with Ashley because she wants a place better suited to her favoured pastime of painting.

Despite her plans to move, sources say they're likely to be living together again once construction on their $7.3 million (GBP3.8 million) apartment in the West Village's Morton Square is completed later this year (05).