yeah, there is similarity once you know to look for it. But to me his real life persona is so different from the (very iconic) Fonzie character that I don’t think I would have made the connection.
The whole Fonzie tough-guy persona was ridiculous in the first place. Who would realistically be afraid of the 5’5’’, 130 lb greaser in real life? They must have cast a lot of short people in Happy Days to help sell the illusion. Before he had even hung up his leather jacket he appeared in Night Shift and The One and Only, roles better suited to his size and natural demeanor.
You kind of have to watch something in-between, like “The Natural” to see the progression.
But again, I’m not so sure it’s fair to take some elderly person and say “Wow, what a change!” when looking at pictures of them in their 20s or 30s.
Who looks even remotely similar 60 years later? It’s about as silly as looking at kindergarten or baby
pictures and then looking at an adult and saying the same thing. Case in point:
The guy’s pushing 90. He was what… 32? when the original series came out. You wouldn’t expect him to look like anything but a wrinkled prune at that age, but he’s actually recognizable as himself.
Oddly enough, I watched “Hubie Halloween” a while back, and she looked more like the Julie Bowen of “Happy Gilmore” than she did in “Modern Family”. Not sure why, but I would have recognized her as the same person but older, but someone had to point out that it was the same actress in “Modern Family”.
I met Lindsay Lohan when she was about 20, and to say she was beautiful would truly be as great an understatement as the English language can allow a person to express. Film and photographs did her no justice; she was staggeringly, jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I would not have thought it possible for a woman to be that lovely.
Today she, to say the very least, has declined far more in looks than would be normal for a woman between the ages of 20 and 34 (a change when a healthy woman would, really, lose none of her looks at all.) But she isn’t just less beautiful, she scarcely looks like the same person. If I sat next to her on a plane I might not notice it was her, and that is literally how I met her the first time.
Never saw the Ducky Boys from The Wanderers I assume 
. They were a fictionalized version of what was apparently a real street gang from the Bronx. In the film for some reason the actors cast were all remarkably short, but the night scenes they are in are the only genuine moments of real menace in the film.
One that surprised me was Lucy Davis. I remembered her on the short-lived TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Ten years later she was in Wonder Woman and I didn’t recognize her until I happened to be reading the credits.
I just saw an Abba retrospective, including recent interviews with three members of the group. Björn Ulvaeus looks quite different, to me, than he did in their heyday. The haircut is a big part of it; also beard and glasses.
Kristen Johnson - I was watching reruns of 3rd Rock, and thought the Sally character looked a little familiar, but couldn’t place her. She is now playing a side-kick on Mom - I’m sure some of it is weight gain, but I certainly didn’t realize they were the same person.
I know we all get older and things get closer to the ground and spread out, but Kathleen Turner was the sexiest, most gorgeous Hollywood actress of her day – even in, The Man With Two Brains. Seen her lately? I suspect some chronic health problem.
If we are speaking about actors getting who “got old and fat” there is always Mandy Patinkin.
He was slim as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride compared to his work now.
I think some of that is also that even if you can clearly see that Robert Redford at 80 something is the same person as photo of Robert Redford at 30 something, there’s also another factor. Sometimes people who are attractive at 30 are not particularly attractive at 60 and conversely, some people who are good-looking at 60 were not good-looking at 30. There are different reasons for it - sometimes it’s because standards of attractiveness change, sometimes it’s because changes associated with aging have changed how the face looks ( sun damage wrinkles, putting on weight), sometimes it’s because of style choices*. But lots of times , it’s really none of those things. Sometimes, a person just needs to “grow into their face” or the opposite - but it’s hard to connect that good-looking 30 year old with the average-looking 60 year old or vice versa.
*most of the photos I’ve seen of Redford have unnaturally red hair for someone in his 70s or 80s with some completely gray areas - he might look better/more like himself with a more realistic hair color
Well, he morphed into Fat Tony; what do you expect? 
In the 90s she started suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and the disorder combined with her medications really did a number on her. I think they’ve made some improvements to her treatments since then because she looks more recognizable now than she did in the mid to late 90s. But she’s got to be in her mid-60s so she’s not going to look exactly the same as she did in 1985.
I saw an old rotund guy who could barely sing, trying to feebly stand on an ice rink… wait, that’s a Foreigner song… Lou Gramm? Oh my goodness.
Turned out he was pumped full of steroids for some condition, and he’s back to looking like himself, now.
I remember watching Lindsay Crouse as Maggie Walsh on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and not recognizing her as Lily Braden in “Slapshot” 25 years earlier.
If we talk about musicians there was a big change between David Crosby of the Byrds 1965 to what he looked like in 1980. He put on weight, lost hair, grew what hair he had longer, added facial hair. Back then 15 years seemed like a long time, now it is a blink of an eye
David Crosby has looked like a walrus since leaving the Byrds, joining CS&N and growing a moustache. He only grew from a juvenile ill-fed walrus to a stately grown up.
Kristen Johnston has lupus myelitis and takes steroids to treat it.
I think it might have made her smart-as-fuck, because I enjoy reading what she has to say on Twitter.
.
(But I will never post a pic either here nor there as no woman wants to throw up in their mouth. )
well according to accounts and what eggert
said herself she let her self go a bit because being “hot” was too much pressure on her mentally and emotionally
plus when you add in the alleged sex abuse that might have happened during Charles in charge …
Another star’s looks who changed a bit is Jodie Sweetin from full house who freely admits hers was due to her almost 2-decade meth addiction and tells kids don’t do drugs unless you want to look like her …
Maddona.
By chance in a library I happened on a selection of Newsweek/Time front covers featuring the other famous actresses who had influenced her “looks”, including Brooke Shields. I can’t remember the other two, but it was startling clear when pointed out, how for successive albums Maddona had changed her eyebrows hair and makeup to reflect famously popular distinctive “looks” of other models/actresses from the previous 10~50 years.