People Sometimes Get Us Confused...

My face is one of those "familiar faces." You know the type. Often when I'm out and about, people think they know me from somewhere. It's always the same thing; the look of semi-recognition; the assorted questions (Where did you grow up?...go to high school/college?...work?...etc.); and then the final determination that, in fact, I look "just like" the person's old babysitter, Starbuck's barista, or long lost best friend from third grade. I believe that I have approximately fifty evil twins running amok in this world, hellbent on tarnishing my good image. Personally, I've always thought of myself as unique looking; however, I'm starting to think that there must be great similarities in my uniqueness.

Enter Greta Garbo. Yesterday, a co-worker introduced me to a new website called myheritage.com, which allows one to upload a photo of themselves into the magical "Celebrity Face Recognition" machine. I'm not privy to how this process actually works, but I can tell you that a cool little face scanning graphic pops up, identifies your face in the uploaded photo, and spits out a battery of celebrities who supposedly look like you (often providing both male and female look-alikes). As you can probably tell by my side-by-side with Miss Greta, I think that the website is still working out a few kinks. Other notables in my collection of "celebrity twins" included young Elizabeth Taylor, Kyra Sedgwick, Jodie Foster, and Jimmy Buffett. Mind you, none of the usual suspects popped up in my results list. In the past, I've been compared to such celebs as Anne Heche, Tilda Swinton (think Ice Queen..."Chronicles of Narnia"), and more recently Jennifer Finnigan (from the TV drama "Close to Home"). [see below]


While I may, in some small ways, bear certain resemblance to a few of these gals, I've never had the good (or bad) fortune of actually being mistaken for any of my celebrity look-alikes. That honor goes to my husband, Marc. As he returned from lunch one afternoon to his office downtown, a man yelled out to him, "Hey! Elton!" Marc stopped, wondering what in the world the stranger was talking about. Again, the man shouted out, "Hey, Elton!" Dumbfounded, Marc said, "Excuse me?" To which the man proudly exclaimed, "I have ALL of your albums!!" Poor Marc, but imagine how thrilled that guy must have been when he told all of his friends that not only did he see ELTON JOHN in downtown Indianapolis, but he spoke to him, as well.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the celebrity scanner caught that made Greta Garbo my number one match. Maybe it was the pursed lips or the "what exactly is she staring at?" gaze. Who knows? But I would almost put money down that if you haven't already, your next click is going to be a trip to My Heritage to find your own celebrity twin.