OK, he looks a lot like John Lithgow. I’ll concede that. But I’m still thinking of someone else…someone younger, and not bald.
To try to help figure it out, I drew a sketch of what Edward IV might look like if he were around today. The facial features are basically identical, but I gave him a modern hairstyle and a suit (complete with a white rose in the breast pocket.) The image shows the sketch next to the original painting, for comparison.
Now that I’ve drawn that sketch, it REALLY reminds me of someone else. For some reason, I’m thinking that he might be Russian, or possibly played a Russian character in a movie. Does that help?
On the other hand, maybe I’ve got several different faces mixed up, for some reason. The overall facial structure is Walken-esque. The small mouth is reminiscent of John Lithgow, the nose of Jon Voight, and the chin of Kyle Maclachlan. Maybe there isn’t one single person he is reminding me of, but several.
Okay, here is an even better comparison. This time, I used Photoshop to literally put the face of the original painting of Edward IV onto the body that I drew. (It really makes me feel like a shitty artist, seeing the subtleties of the face that I failed to capture in the original sketch - my drawing of the face looks like a poorly-drawn caricature by comparison.)
If it helps at all, your sketch (in spite of the alterations you did in the following post above), is giving me vibes of somebody I can’t name at the moment. But I’ll come back as soon as I get that name.
The blending (or isolation) of features from multiple people is how my wife and I will communicate which face(s) we’re seeing in a new face.
But there’s someone you’ve captured in your sketch, whether it was intentional or not, that has me seeing the face of somebody in politics – AHA!!! I have it! It’s the ex-press-secretary with the book on Bush. Scott McClellan?
McClellan’s face is a little too fleshy, though I agree there are some similarities. But more importantly, I had no idea who the man was until I looked at your link, and I certainly had never seen his picture before, so it’s impossible that the face of Edward IV would have reminded me of someone that I didn’t know about in the first place. I’m thinking the person I have in mind is an actor. And ever since I made the second image, superimposing the actual face onto the new body, I’m starting to think it’s Kyle MacLachlan.
A history professor of mine who I sent the link to said it looked like Meryl Streep! She also agreed with the John Lithgow comparison.
I don’t know, though…I still have this mental image in my mind of someone younger, and as I said before, for some reason I have the idea that this person is either Russian or played a Russian character in a show or movie. I also feel like he played a cop, the type of cop who wears a shoulder holster and a dress shirt and tie. Does this help at all?
For those who said Christopher Walken; Edward definitely has that look, to some extent, but King Henry VI, his predecessor, was REALLY a Walken lookalike! Look at that face!
It’s nearly impossible to find a picture of a younger John Lithgow, with hair, and it’s equally impossible to find a 3/4 profile shot of him like the portrait of Edward, but I managed to find an image, unbelievably, with both. (Here it is.) And yes, in the younger picture of him, the resemblance is quite uncanny.
Edward IV, by the way, was renowned for being extremely good-looking. He was a very tall man, at 6’4" being the tallest English monarch to date. He was also widely admired for his military skill and was supposedly extremely strong and physically powerful. Also, from everything I’ve read, he was considered extremely even-tempered, calm, kind, and easy-going. I read on one site (can’t remember which) that all of the illustrations and paintings of him reflect his personality in his facial expressions. He has sort of a half-smile in all of them, and his face is handsome but just fleshy enough to also look jovial. (This was contrasted with his brother, Richard III, who would eventually take over the throne - all of the portraits of the latter depict an intense-looking and sinister man.)
I tend to agree with John Lithgow as the first choice, but may I suggest an alternate whose name hasn’t shown up yet – John de Lancie, better known as Q of Star Trek fame.
That guy’s nose is too big and his chin is too small to closely resemble Edward IV. Here is another painting of him (which seems to be a copy of the first.) And again this is what he would look like if he were a modern man. Quite dapper indeed. His facial features are very “delicate” as opposed to being pronounced (as in the case of that guy from Star Trek you linked to.)
ETA - I have to say it again, that shirt is THE single most psychedelic shirt of any European monarch I have ever seen. It looks more like something an East Asian emperor would wear, than a King of England.
The picture you drew with the suit and the subsequent one where you photoshopped the painted face on remind me of a sketch of an as yet un-named Doctor Who!
(The hairstyle and suit look like David Tennent…)
I immediately thought of John Lithgow on the first two pictures.
