"Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like...?" A Photo Essay

Everyone wants a celebrity doppelganger. It's flattering to have someone stop you on the street and say, "Oh my gosh! You look exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger/Queen Elizabeth/Madonna!" We love our celebrities, and looking like them can be pretty cool. Heck, even sounding like them is cool. Our friend Terry sounds like Papa Smurf, and it's really endearing!
The most flattering time this happened to me was a couple years ago when my hair was still long. I'd gone to the movie by myself and was heading to a party afterwards. I didn't think I was looking particularly smashing, but a nice couple (two ladies) stopped me as I was about to walk out to the parking lot. The one with the mullet said, "Holy cow! You look just like the girl from Phantom of the Opera!" Now of course, I'd never been mistaken for Emmy Rossum, so at first I thought she was smoking something. But then she turned to her partner and said, "What's her name? Not the one from the movie... the one who used to be married to Andrew Lloyd Webber?" I incredulously supplied, "Sarah Brightman?" And she said, "Yes! That's the one! You could be her twin!" And let me tell ya, that was nice to hear. I don't really think it's true, but I'll take it. Maybe it's something to aspire to. Let's just say she looks pretty good for a woman her age.
Anyway, there are a lot of look-alikes out there. When I was younger, I used to wonder if God had a good number of basic models that he'd tweak so everyone was just different enough. Sometimes a resemblance is uncanny. And for some people, even the slightest familiarity is enough to inspire them.
Take my 12th grade English teacher, Mr. Peters, for example. My friend Melanie made him her authority-figure crush that year, and used to talk about how Mr. Peters looked exactly like Sting.
I'm sorry to say upon checking the yearbook recently, I discovered this was a gross exaggeration, and the foolish imaginations of a young girl. But I'm not condemning her-- she had us all convinced. Mr. Peters was one of my greatest high school teachers and I loved him dearly, but I can tell you it was much more exciting to go to his class and fantasize that Sting was discussing Kenneth Bragnah's interpretation of Hamlet than just some man who dated another English teacher down the hall.
Still, we let him in on it, and I think it really pleased him. When I ran into him at a basketball game a couple weeks ago, he'd grown out his hair into a little ponytail. He's retired from teaching now, and "focuses on his music." Here's his CD cover:

Sometimes the resemblances are a bit stronger. You'll recall my friend Andrew visited recently. Here he is doing dishes in my kitchen on a Saturday morning:

He's a handsome chap, I think we can all agree. But the summer he and I were students in Poland together, we had an occasion to pop over to Prague for a weekend. While we meandered cobblestone streets, I caught a glimpse of his passport picture. Oh, if only I had a scanner and access to it! He looked a lot like Matt Damon, and I told him so. It wasn't the first time he'd heard it:

I don't know if you can see it now. Andrew's grown-man look is more chiseled than his pre-mission passport picture, but it was enough that when we stayed with a friend's mother in Wroclaw, he insisted he would be just like Jason Bourne and fall immediately to sleep on the floor (he might have just been trying to keep me from feeling guilty about taking Michal's bed). He was grumpy when he woke up the next morning because he WASN'T Jason Bourne, but I recall him looking nice for church after I ironed his shirt to make it up to him.

Another friend who gets stopped on the street pretty frequently is Pauly, my bestie/fill-in little bro. Here we are on New Year's Eve:

Before I knew Paul, he actually WON a Napoleon Dynamite look-alike contest and had a little photo-opp with Jon Heder.

And this year for Halloween, I convinced him to dress up as Bob Ross from "The Joy of Painting." Guess who won the costume contest? That's right-- my little Paulo. Our friend Sev looks quite a bit like Steve Young as well, but Paul BECAME Bob Ross. It was super.

So what brought on this latest musing? Actually, it's my new nickname. A couple boys our circle has branched out to include now call me "Duchess."

It all started out with Luna and Felix's obsession with Lords and Ladies and what not (so they tell me), but I ran into them via Louise at Tresann's wedding reception. What can I say? I had really big hair that night, and the rest is history. No one thinks I look like Kiera Knightly, but I suppose I occasionally have her hair. Just hopefully not this style:

Actually, in this picture, I think she may bear shocking resemblance to Paul:

Just kidding, but are you all getting that Paul is bound to be a celebrity? He's kind of got that everyman (and woman) look about him. He'd be very versatile in Hollywood.

No, these days, this is what I really look like (well, at least, most of the time):
But in my day, I've been told I look a bit like a young Angela Lansbury (pre-"Murder, She Wrote")

And on occasion, people say Kate Winslet, to which I reply, "I wish!" (I think it's our lips)

The worst was my freshman year at BYU when I was still sporting a beret occasionally. I'd just gotten back to the dorms from a date with a much older, more-sophisticated man named Richard. He was 27 (don't ask me what business a 27-year-old man had going out with an 18-year-old girl... oops!), and very nice. But I think what sealed the evening for him was when a girl from another floor came through the lobby and said, "Hey! You look just like Monica Lewinsky!"

I'm pretty sure it was just the beret, but that's not flattering. I don't think I've worn one since.

Of course, I've gone through other celebrity incarnations. Remember the band "Flock of Seagulls" anyone?

Yes, they were the inspiration for this hairdo:

And everyone knows that when I cut off 14" of hair for Locks of Love...

... I suddenly turned into the "Berries and Cream" guy:

Still, it could be worse. I could just be plain delusional. I know I've told this story before, but I've got this sweet little friend named Judge. This picture is from our date to the State Fair a few years back:

I'd said to him, just as he was about to take a bite of his fried Snickers Bar (EW!), that he looked like a celebrity. He said, "Oh, I know, right? Matthew McConaughey?"

And I said, no. "I was thinking more along the lines of Christopher Lloyd."