Look-alike
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A look-alike is a living person who closely resembles another living person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or royalty. Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public events or appearing on television and film playing the person they look like, often in scenes which call for special skills. Perhaps the most famous look-alike is Jeannette Charles who has worked as a look-alike to Queen Elizabeth II since the early 1970s. Some look-alike actors play more than one role in a production.
Examples of look-alikes in contemporary history and media
- The BBC comedy programme Doubletake made extensive use of look-alikes playing their doubles in apparently embarrassing situations, seen through CCTV cameras and amateur video, using distance shots and shaky camera-work to disguise the true identity of those being filmed.
- The 1993 film Dave featured a look-alike who was hired to impersonate the president who has suffered a stroke which left him in a persistent vegetative state.
- The 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep starred Bruce Campbell in the role of an elderly Elvis Presley who had traded places with an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff (also played by Campbell), and now lived in a nursing home.
- Saddam Hussein employed several look-alikes during his Iraq reign.
See also
External links
- Sulekha.com: I Am Saddam Hussein (http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305834)
- The Many Faces of Saddam Hussein (http://www.ishipress.com/saddams.htm)de:Doppelgänger