Between paintings, photographs, and daguerreotypes, we know what quite a few people from bygone eras look like. And a lot of them, it seems, bear a striking resemblance to modern celebrities.
Some people don't just take this as a funny coincidence but joke that it raises certain exciting questions: Is Jack Black a time traveler? Have Nicolas Cage and John Travolta been warring for centuries? And just how long has Jay Z been making music in Brooklyn?
These comparisons have been noted before, by sites like PlayBuzz, The New York Daily News, and the former site Totally Looks Like. Sometimes, the celebrities are even confronted with photos of their historical doppelgängers, like with Daniel Radcliffe.
If you're looking to cast any historical dramas, here's a list of 25 celebrities and the historical figures they closely resemble.
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Nicolas Cage famously looks like this Confederate prisoner of war.
The meme of celebrity immortality may have begun in 2011, when a Seattle-based man tried to sell a photoof Lt. Robert M. Smith, a Confederate prisoner of war photographer, who looks exactly like Nicolas Cage.
The title of the eBay listing was "Nicolas Cage is a Vampire."
"Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so," the listing said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host."
Shortly after it went online, the listing disappeared without a trace.
Cage may have dropped hints about his life as an immortal vampire in his movies. He played a man convinced he was a vampire in the 1988 cult movie "Vampire's Kiss," and he played a 3,000-year-old wizard named Balthazar in "The Magician's Apprentice," from 2010.
A few months after the photo appeared, Cage went on David Letterman's talk show to deny that he was an immortal vampire.
"Now look, I don't drink blood and the last time I looked in the mirror I had a reflection,"Cage said.
Snopes rates the claim "undetermined."
Cage is allegedly in a centuries-long battle with John Travolta.
Shortly after the Cage eBay affair, a similar listing went up on the site for a 150-year-old photo of a man who looked a lot like John Travolta. They have similar-looking eyes, hairline, facial structure, and penchant for longish sideburns.
"I know you are saying John Travolta is alive today in 2011 and he doesn't look 151 years old," the seller wrote in the listing. "John Travolta is a Scientologist, and many Scientologists believe in a type of reincarnation. Of course, time travel can't be ruled out as well."
As the AV Club noted, both Cage and Travolta starred in the 1997 movie "Face/Off," where they played characters who tried to kill each other and who swapped faces. Perhaps it may have been a metaphor for their frustrations with immortality, and the sameness of existence when you've lived a long life.
Keanu Reeves looks a lot like an actor from 150 years ago.
Keanu Reeves is 52, but he basically hasn't looked any different since his 20s. He also bears a striking resemblance to the 19th century French actor Paul Mounet, which has led some people to theorize that they're one and the same.
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