Net Worth: Celebrity look-alikes get within reach / LJWorld.com

Archive for Friday, March 7, 2008

March 7, 2008

MyHeritage.com: Celebrity Collage

In my college years, I was often told I bore a striking resemblance to Live Aid guru Bob Geldof.

It must have been that giant crop of spiked hair ... and my face.

Then somewhere between the release of the movies "The Fly" and "Jurassic Park," people started comparing me to lanky actor Jeff Goldblum.

By the current decade my hairline and eyesight had both dwindled, so the celebrity analogy became comedian David Cross. In fact, I once ran into Shawn and Marlon Wayans at a hotel in Hollywood, who proceeded to mistake me for the bald, bespectacled jester despite my protests. (Note: I'll admit that Cross is slightly funnier if he'll admit I'm slightly better looking.)

Fortunately, the power of the Internet offers a quasi-scientific solution to what celebrities I - and, by extension, you - look like. MyHeritage.com wields a feature called Celebrity Collage in which viewers are granted the opportunity to submit a photo that is then scanned by the site's mighty computers utilizing "face-recognition technology."

Just upload a head shot and witness the surprising and often unintentionally hilarious results.

MyHeritage cranks out my eight "celebrity look-alikes" and provides a percentage ratio for accuracy.

Coming in at No. 1 with a 72 percent match is Emmy Award-winning actor James Spader. Sure, he's five years older than me, but he is a "leading man." That's flattering, right?

Next up is 81-year-old French mathematician Jean-Pierre Serre - you know, the guy who helped popularize class field theory and the theory of complex multiplication.

Both "Friends" actor Matthew Perry and "Jaws" star Roy Scheider are listed in the 60th percentile. No complaints with those respectable choices.

Then things get weird.

At 64 percent comes Jack Osbourne, the short, pudgy reality TV star and drug addict. Since none of these attributes pertain to me, it's doubtful we would ever be mistaken for each other in a police lineup.

He is followed, of course, by Queen Latifah.

According to the chart, I look 1 percent more like "Hip-Hop's First Lady" than I do musician Elvis Costello or the late French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson.

My faith in the process is starting to dwindle at this point. Though it's hard to be objective about one's physical appearance, I am fairly certain that no one on earth would ever compare me to Queen Latifah - other than in sassy attitude or mad rhyming skills.

Looking at it from lovely Latifah's perspective, imagine how disappointed she would be to find my picture listed as a 57 percent match on her own MyHeritage chart.

Discussion

LJWorld.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post.
Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.

7 March 2008
at 11:16 a.m.

Suggest removal

Permalink

Pywacket (Anonymous) says…

This is hilarious! You were very brave to give Celebrity Collage a try. I don't know if I should do this—I may not be ready to learn that I bear a striking resemblance to Lassie! ;-)

Some years back, a coworker always swore I looked like Jane Seymour, an assertion I never understood because (1) I could not see that myself and (2) she didn't APPEAR to be drunk when she said it…

When I was much younger, I was sometimes told that I looked like Stevie Nicks (Belladonna or Buckingham/Nicks era), which made a little more sense, at least.

Anyway, this was funny. And if I happen to run into somebody in town who looks like a startling cross between Queen Latifah and David Cross, I'll just smile and say, “Hiya, Jon!”