How to find your doppelganger

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend from high school who is now based in London sent me this message: "You look just like Myleene Klass. My husband agrees." My first reaction? Google Images. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

I hope that you will pardon me for such vanity, but you're likely to feel good about being described as a dead ringer for a celebrity, especially when it happens to be someone really hot. A dead ringer in these days means "exact duplicate." In the past,celebrity or no celebrity, "dead ringer" was supposedly a bad thing. The phrase has existed since 1882, and it referred to a race horse that is substituted for another of similar appearance to defraud bookies.

A doppelganger is a similar concept, although it's much more eerie than fraudulent. In German, doppelgänger means a double or a look-alike of a certain person. It also refers to the paranormal experience of seeing yourself--and I'm not talking mirrors, photographs, and videos. If you thought that THAT was scary, try digesting the concept that it meant bad luck--the death omen kind. In fact, in Norse mythology, a ghost referred to as a vardøger is an apparition of a living person that does this person's action in advance. Remember the urban legend about a friend of a friend who died, but seconds before his death, he was seen somewhere else? Among followers of paranormal and esoteric knowledge, they may refer to the concept as bilocation or "evil twin."

Enough about the scary part (although I'm fully aware that it's almost Halloween). If you haven't heard of the Doppelganger Theory, it's that belief that somewhere in the world, you have a twin. Although there's no scientific backing to that, it's part of pop culture now (Hint: Tomb Raider, Coraline, and even CSI).

And so, remembering Cosmo's Separated at Birth section, I took the time to pull together a couple of doppelgangers--from the famous to the obscure. Indonesian Ilham Anas and US President Barack Obama. American actress Tina Fey and US politician Sarah Palin. Tom Cruise and CSI's Nick Stokes (George Eads). Jake Gyllenhaal and CSI Miami's Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo). Mel Gibson and Christian singer Carman. Myleene Klass and moi.

Barack Obama and Ilham Anas

Photo from http://www.ebaumsworld.com

Tina Fey and Sara Palin 

Photo above from http://tothewire.wordpress.com

Tom Cruise and George Eads

Jake Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Togo

 

 Mel Gibson and Carman

Myleene Klass and (shameless) me :P

If you want to find your own celebrity lookalike, there are plenty of applications on the web--and they're all free! If you have a Facebook account (who doesn't?!), you can use FaceDouble. With this fb app, you can find your celebrity lookalike or a doppelganger who's also another Facebook user. It also automatically imports this into a photo album, so you can use it as your profile pic. What's more, you can create one for your fb friends and surprise them with their own doppelgangers and celebrity lookalikes in a tagging spree that everyone on Facebook seems to love to do so much. Or you can go to MyHeritage.com. It's actually a geneology site, but it uses a face-recognition software which allows you to do more than just find your doppelganger. There's plenty of fun stuff you can do, like find long-lost relatives or morph yourself into Jessica Alba--and that's just for starters. Try it out and do come back to tell me which celebrity lookalike has graced my blog with his/her presence.

See Also:
Who Started Doppelganger Week on Facebook?
Morph Your Friend into Her Fave Celeb!