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For the record, Tobey Maguire.

A few thought exercises. Would you rather be told you looked like a celebrity or just told flat out that you are good-looking? Since 98% of celebrities are good-looking, that's often how one takes it. I guess that's Hollywood celebrities, though. With sports celebrities, it's hit or miss, and politicians often aren't beauty-contest winners or former beauty-contest winners, although male politicians do tend to be tall.

I suppose it could cause cognitive dissonance if you really didn't like the person you resembled. I don't completely dismiss physiognomy, but I think I would restrict its potential to analyzing one characteristic, rather than thinking certain wholes portended well or didn't. So I am at peace with my one-time resemblance to Maguire.

I think to some extend our look leads to people imputing personality characteristics that aren't there, though. I've heard Maguire described as sensitive and unconventional Hollywood, and I think that might be more about how he looks than the way he is. So people might think Tobey and I are alike, just because of how we look. People might work from certain premises of physiognomy, without knowing it.

If you feel you have a soulmate, and let's keep it to people of the same sex, you don't expect to look like him or her.

It is odd how you can feel much more similar to a friend than a sibling, despite the genetic relation. But presumably a relative is the only case where you might really hit the jackpot of looking like someone and being like that person. Unless I'm underrating physiognomy, I guess.

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Mmmm... Matt, I gotta admit I Never saw the Liotta lookalike .. guess it's an Eye of the Beholder thing.. or maybe your kind & gentle temperment is so far removed from the characters that I loved watching Ray portray.. nah, you ain't Ray...

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I had a hotel clerk tell me just this weekend that I look like Kenny Rogers. I definitely took that as a compliment, whether it was meant as one or not. I've also been mistaken by various people in the last year or two for my father's brother, and my mother's brother. Sigh. I guess it's all my gray hair.

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