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Cape Town - Dawn Lutrell from Corvallis, Oregon in the US, says people believe she’s Ellen DeGeneres and often won’t accept it when she says she’s not.
Comparisons started in 1986, shortly after she graduated from high school, while Ellen worked a stand-up act.
And since Ellen got her talk variety programme, The Ellen Show, Dawn says she’s been mistaken for her many times.
She claims strangers come up to her every day, due to her comparable facial features, mannerisms and persona – often with them being lost for words and even shaking with shock!
Dawn believes the likeness runs deeper with them both being comedians, gay and determined to make the world a better place with kindness.
“We are both gay women, stand-up comedians, both fighting the same battle as far as being kind and good. Our physical looks are one thing but it goes so much deeper.
She decided to embrace her similarity to the talk-show host two years ago and started to work as a lookalike, after a meme and paparazzi-style photographs of her surfaced online.
“I made a video saying, ‘Look I know you think I look like her but I’m not [her]’, which went viral.
“The more I say I don’t look like her, the more I look like her to other people [and] the whole thing completely backfires.”
Due to her resemblance, she’s regularly asked for hugs in Starbucks, has received a discount at Burger King, and shops have even closed their doors to the public for her.
“I once had a girl at a Burger King drive-thru flip out when she saw me. She was shaking so much then a bunch of people came to the window – I told her I wasn’t Ellen, but she didn’t believe me.
“Me and a Justin Timberlake lookalike went out and they shut a store down because they thought it was Ellen and Justin. The power of this is beyond me.
“There’s nothing I can do about this. Even people at Starbucks ask to hug me because I look like her.
“It’s like we live a parallel existence. Even our sense of humour is so similar. I have to say it freaks me out.”
Dawn says although she didn’t see the resemblance before she was forced accept it.
“Ellen is an incredible person, but it just got to be so ridiculous that I can’t ignore it no matter how hard I try.”
“What Ellen has done for the gay community alone will be in the history books, and from that perspective I won’t complain. She’s an amazing, loved person and I guess I’m lucky.”
Dawn, whose picture has been shown on Ellen’s show, maintains she’s very respectful of the performer.
Instead of capitalising on the comedian’s comedic material, she writes her own scripts, she says.
“If Ellen by chance were to see a five-minute clip of my stand-up, I would at least want her to go, ‘Wow, at least this girl wrote her own jokes.’
“If I wanted to, I could impersonate her and use her stand-up scripts, but I’ve tried to maintain autonomy.
“I would like to meet Ellen in private for coffee, rather face to face than on her show.
“I don’t think I’d feel like I’m meeting a celebrity. It would be like meeting a better version of me, which could be interesting. We could have a good laugh about our lives.”
(Source and photos: Caters/www.magazinefeatures.co.za)
