7 Ridiculous Jobs You Can Get As A Celebrity Lookalike
Even in a celebrity-obsessed culture, is there really any advantage for a person who kind of resembles a star, but doesn't have any of their talent? You can't just break into their mansion and take over their life; somebody is eventually going to notice. But fear not, celebrity doppelgangers, because today the opportunities are plentiful and lucrative, if not a little alarming.
Look Like A Famous Politician? Porn Awaits
When Donald Trump "won" the presidency, there was a big push in the porn world -- a thrust, if you will -- to find a Trump lookalike to bone people on camera. And find him they did! xHamster, which I understand is a burlesque site of some kind, hired a man named Johnny Brutal to play exactly that role. And if you Google him, I mean, sure, he looks like Trump, in the sense that both have limbs, so good job. Close enough. The same can be said for this guy, who also did Trump porn. If you look even vaguely like a politician, or simply tell people you do, there's work out there!
The depths that some porn will go to -- or heights, depending on your point of view -- is nowhere better exemplified than in the story of Searcy Hayes, who was paid $10,000 to film six minutes of sexual congress after she appeared on Maury. Why? Because she looked like Ted Cruz.
This 21-year-old mother of a three-month-old son seeking Maury Povich's help to determine whether her fiance was cheating on her looked enough like 48-year-old male senator Ted Cruz that she was paid to have sex on film specifically for that reason. Nothing you just read can be undone by any prayer or Stygian bargain with fell powers, so don't bother. FYI, I watched the video, which was actually 6:18 in length. I'm just going to move on now.
Related: 25 Celebrity Lookalikes You Never Noticed (And Can't Un-See)
Be A Professional Drunken Idiot
Thaddeus Kalinoski was a down-on-his-luck dude who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The right place was Las Vegas. The right time was 2012. Oh, and the right props were sunglasses and a beard. Kalinoski started getting recognized not as himself, but as the character Alan from the Hangover movies, played by Zach Galifianakis. People wanted to take his picture. Then they wanted to buy him drinks. Then they gave him money, and suddenly a sort-of career was born. One which worked Kalinoski so hard that he had to retire after several years because he couldn't handle it anymore (or at least, that's what he apparently told The Sun).
According to Kalinoski, he was getting paid thousands of dollars a night to hang out at bachelor parties and get wasted with strangers. He'd drink to excess, do lines of coke, and smoke things people handed to him without even asking what they were. This is exactly what Alan would have done, but keep in mind that Alan is also a fictional train wreck. By 2017, Kalinoski had to get off the pseudo-celebrity party train. So let that serve as a warning to any of you dreaming of doing the same. Even though it really does sound like he was getting to do the fun part of being famous without any of the actual work.
Related: 12 Interchangeable Celebrities You Probably Get Confused
Not Bond, Not James Bond
Looking like James Bond is probably not a bad thing. James Bond was designed to be cool, if cool put on a tuxedo and then had sex with your crush in a car you could never afford. Steve Wright from Norfolk would know better than anyone, because he looks like Daniel Craig -- or at least, enough like Daniel Craig that millionaires will pay him to show up at parties in tuxedos and just ... look like he does.
Wright explains how when he started his job, he got flown on a jet to Monte Carlo for a screening of Casino Royale. Someone paid to fly a guy to a movie because he looked like the guy in the movie. Others have flown him to St. Tropez to act out the scene wherein Bond walks out of the ocean in his swimsuit, which sounds like this guy almost got sex-crimed.
The most bizarre thing about Wright is that he looks enough like Craig that you might see him on the street and think "Hey that guy looks like Daniel Craig, sorta." But you wouldn't really think "Hey, that's Daniel Craig!" Despite that, he seems to make a killing as Bond, and if that video is to be believed, the dude is doing corporate parties where he pretends to fight terrorists while people in eveningwear sip champagne and eat extravagant food. Remember, rich people are so bored that it is super easy to entertain them.
Related: 7 Celebrity Fakers You Won't Believe Fooled The World
Rihanna's Eyebrow Stand-In
Imagine being as rich and famous and ostensibly busy as Rihanna. How do you ever shop for clothes or get your brows tweezed? You can't! You have like a million people under your umbrella counting on you, so you're busy. What to do? Well, you hire someone who looks like you to wear clothes or get their eyebrows done so you know what you'll look like when you pay your serfs to dress you in the morning. I kid! Rihanna is adorable. But yeah, she pays people who look like her to try out looks on them. If you resemble Rihanna, maybe you can get this job! Though it seems like there would also be other opportunities out there, I don't know.
"But I don't look like Rihanna, I look exactly like Kim Kardashian," at least 200 of you are saying. Worry not! She has also employed body doubles to try on clothes on her behalf because she was too tired to do it, according to that article. On an unrelated note, my uncle was a firefighter who saved many lives over the course of his career and dressed himself every day. But in fairness, I write comedy articles and sometimes won't get dressed for days, so maybe I have no point. Moving on.
Related: 5 Horrifying Fan 'Lookalike' Plastic Surgeries
Bring Comfort To Elton John's Estranged Mother
It must be weird to be an average person who has a child who becomes world-famous. A lot of celebrities come from well-off families, so they have at least some understanding, but if you're just you and your kid is beloved the world over, how do you deal with that? People cry when they see your child, while you just remember how they left peanut butter fingerprints on the cat. It must be even worse when the two of you don't particularly get along.
For instance, Elton John's mother Sheila had a falling out with her son back in the day, and the two didn't mend things for years. During that time, she celebrated her 90th birthday, and apparently both wanted and didn't want her son there. So she opted to hire an Elton John impersonator to play her party. You know, people make jokes about their relationships with their mothers causing them to go into therapy, but this is some next-level shit.
Related: The 5 Best Conspiracy Theories About Celebrity Imposters
Model For Forever 21 When Your Famous Counterpart Refuses (And Get Them Sued)
The world of the celebrity lookalike can get a little precarious when someone hires you to pretend to be that celebrity for their own gain, hoping that their teenage customer base won't know the difference. That's how Forever 21 rolled when they thought Ariana Grande would be too pricey to hire as a spokesperson, so maybe try Ariana Venti instead.
Grande is now suing the shit out of the chain for trying to use her likeness to shill their blackjack sets or whatever it is that Forever 21 sells. Not only did they hire a lookalike, but they used actual photos of her and her music, basically shrugging off the whole idea of asking permission and just hoping shit would be cool when an actual endorsement deal fell through.
She's not the only one who's had to do this. Robin Williams sued a lookalike for trading on his name back in 2005. Crispin Glover sued the producers of Back To The Future Part II for hijacking his likeness and putting it on another actor. Kim Kardashian sued Old Navy for using a lookalike in one of their ads. But notice that most of the time, it's the company getting sued and not the lookalike. So read the fine print before taking the job, guy who looks like The Rock.
Related: The 10 Most Bizarrely Interchangeable Celebrities
Doppelbabies!
Speaking of Kim Kardashian, she doesn't just use clothes doubles, but baby doubles as well. So you can get a job as a celebrity lookalike before you master your own bowels. Nice. There were reports that Kim and Kanye paid upwards of $500,000 to hire a baby lookalike to throw the paparazzi off their scent while the real baby North was out and about. Either this is the most baffling waste of money I have ever heard of, or it's a terrifying sign of our civilization's impending collapse. Or both?
Imagine being a paparazzo who, for whatever shameful reason, wants a photo of Kim and Kanye's baby. So you see a baby leave the house with the nanny, and you speed off on your Shame Scooter and snap a few pics and sell them to TMZ or whatever. But it's not the real baby! It's a different baby! Well, who gives a shit? How would you even know? And why do the parents care if you're taking pictures of their baby or some similar one they swapped in? Wait, is it a safety thing? Are they worried that aggressive paparazzi will damage their real baby, so they hire a lesser baby to take the hit instead? This is madness from every angle!
Rumor has it that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes did the same thing back in the day, after people spotted a second child hanging out in the same clothes as theirs. Which means they were either doing this or something much, much weirder. So chin up, toddlers and babies who read my articles. You could soon be making so much more money than I do.
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