Two years ago, my HS students told me that I looked just like the guy from the Tom Green Show. I didn’t know what they meant until I watched it one night. They really meant “The fat guy from the Tom Green Show.”
Thankfully, I’ve lost 60 lbs and now look like the guy from the Proclaimers. (New glasses) I very seldom sing “I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more…” unless I’m dancing with my dog, Sheila. She looks like the dog from Down and Out In Beverly Hills.
Emmit Smith thought I was my big brother (who isn’t famous, but attended the University of Florida with him).
When I wear my hair short, people insist I look quite like Winona Ryder. When I wear my hair longer, a few friends say Drew Barrymore. The two don’t look much alike, but apparently I resemble both. It drives me crazy. Especially the Drew Barrymore comparison because I can’t stand her.
once some crazy homeless bum guy (in San Francisco? No! I don’t believe it!) said I looked JUST LIKE Jodie Foster…then went on to say “well, except she has all day to work out and take care of herself and all” well THANKS A LOT!
The really creepy thing was around 7 years later I’m sitting in a gas station parking lot in Reno while my husband goes inside to get a map and a woman’s standing at a payphone and tells her friend “hang on” walks over and sticks her head in my window and says “OH MY GOD! I totally thought you were JODIE FOSTER!!!”
The odd thing is I for reals look nothing like Jodie Foster…I maybe look like I ATE Jodie Foster or something…people must seriously have Jodie Foster on the brain or something.
Oh, well. When I was in high school, they said that I looked like Marlon Brando. That was when he was making movies like On The Waterfront. Once several years later a waitress asked me if I was Marlon Brando and this time the movie was Last Tango in Paris. Thank goodness it hasn’t happened in several years.
This guy I used to work with told me that I look like Anaheim Mighty Duck Paul Kariya. He was rather insistent about it. (Not that I was complaining about being compared to a pro athlete, mind you.) Some of the pictures I’ve seen of Paul don’t look that much like me, but I found one that’s just eerie in the resemblance.
I once went to a summer festival with a date to see the jazz group Hiroshima. Before the performance, as we wandered the grounds, we were approached several times for autographs. Apparently, together we looked like the percussionist and the lead singer.
When my brother was in college, little kids regularly ran up to him excitedly, thinking he was Greg Evigan, the star of that stupid show “BJ and the Bear” (Evigan played a truck driver with a pet chimpanzee).
Now, my brother didn’t look THAT much like Greg Evigan, and the kids’ moms invariably knew that he wasn’t the real deal. They’d apologize for the mix-up… but my brother didn’t mind. He was always willing to play along and pose for a picture or sign a bogus autograph (“To so-and-so, Love, BJ McKay and his best friend Bear”). After all, it didn’t cost him anything to sign the autograph, and it made some little kid happy.
When I was in college, I went to a party thrown by a friend of a friend of my girlfriend (who is now my wife). When we arrived, said friend of friend of girlfriend exclaimed over how much I looked like Rob Lowe’s brother (whose name I’ve forgotten. Matt Lowe?). He told me how ruggedly handsome Rob’s brother was, just a dream date. Later in the evening he danced a little provocative dance in high heels just for me. I guess he was behind on that “conversion quota” that Esprix is always talking about. My wife still teases me about just how close I was to reorienting my sexuality.
Then, oddly enough, years later, I was eating dinner in a restaurant on a business trip, and the waiter asked me if I was Rob Lowe. (No, I’m not. Really.) Like other posters, I don’t think I look all that much like Rob (or his brother, I guess), other than having a relatively prominent chin.
I have been told I look like Chris Elliot and Anthony Edwards. Guess who I prefer?
In a grocery store parking lot, a woman stopped dead, looked at me and said, “You look just like the doctor from E.R.” Without missing a beat, I replied, “I am the doctor from E.R.”, got into my car and drove away. I wonder still what she thinks of that.
Someday I hope to be famous enough to be mistaken for myself.
But seriously, folks… back in 1993 I was strolling through the waiting room during jury duty and did a double take when I saw the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The photo on the cover looked just like me. The guy over whose shoulder I was peeing looked up at me, quickly looked back down, and up again.
“Scary, huh?” I asked. I then read the caption to find out why I was front page news. It was some guy down in Texas named David Koresh, who had just shot 4 ATF agents. I had to endure weeks of phone calls from most of my friends and sister ragging on me.
Also, in high school, I was told I looked like Let It Be-era John Lennon.
I look exactly, EXACTLY, like Jack Dangers, who is essentially the one-man band Meat Beat Manifesto. I feel so strongly about this that I joined the message board solely to post this.
I saw MBM in Milan, Italy in 93, when I was an exchange student there studying architecture. We arrived at the club early and met the band (Satyricon era, three man band), chatted with them a bit, Jack got us a beer, and generally had a great time. Then back in to town to kill time until the show.
That night, everyone thought I was him. The guy at the door waved me in. I tried to give him money twice. I went back after the line died down and explained that I was, in fact, not in the band. Then three people in succession came up to have their picture taken with me. I explained that I was not Jack, but my Italian and their English were not meshing well. I went to the bar for a drink, they wouldn’t let me pay. I put all the money in their tip jar. My friend and I needed a ride back to the train station, Jack found one for us. On the ride, the guys asked me where I was playing next.
My mind drifts to thoughts of a van screeching to a halt on a dark, deserted highway, a door opening, a short haired american protesting that it’s not his fault who he looks like is thrown into the dirt, van streaks away…
Tomorrow night I’m playing in Paris. Maybe you can make it?
In recent times, I’ve bumped into many complete strangers who swore that I was Scott Glenn (sp?); I know he was in “The Right Stuff” but beyond that have no idea why he (or I) would have any sort of fan club or recognition.
These “mistakes” are tapering off, but for a while it was pretty eerie. I do NOT do autographs!
