Do I Look Like Taylor Lautner?

In January, a few days after my appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” aired, my friend Debbie sent me an email saying that someone had posted a comment YouTube saying that I look like Taylor Lautner.  What the person, whose user name is “chuuchiee”, actually said was:

From a long distance, David looks a bit like Taylor Lautner.

Then, when my episode was rebroadcast a few weeks ago, someone named “Cecy J.” posted a comment on the Ellen website, saying:

Great Job David!!! Awesome and Inspiring!!  P.S. Anyone noticed that he kinda resembles Taylor Lautner??? Just saying.

When I heard about the first comment, I laughed it off.  Sure, I took it as a compliment, since, after all, Taylor Lautner is a huge Hollywood heartthrob that gives girls a tendency to shriek and go weak in the knees.  And, I noted that the compliment had conditions: I only looked a bit like him from a long distance.  So, Taylor and I could stand together at the end of a football field, and you could stand at the other end, and just try to tell us apart!

After I saw the second comment, however, I got curious.  Do I look like Taylor Lautner?  I hadn’t considered if there was any truth to the comparison… until now.

Before I get to the side-by-side photos, I thought I’d help out the readers who live on the moon or under the sea or, for some other reason, don’t know who Taylor Lautner is.  I did my research, and found out that the two of us actually have a few things in common:

1. We were both born in Michigan (Taylor in Grand Rapids, me in Pontiac).
2. I love sharks, and Taylor starred in the 2005 film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D.
3. We’ve both appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in a wet t-shirt.

Okay, so 2 is a stretch, and 3 is a flat-out lie, but still, we’re both native Michiganders.  Taylor, Madonna, and I should start a club!

Taylor is best-known for playing Jacob Black in the Twilight movies – a role that made him a star in the dreams of millions of teenage girls worldwide.  Last year, he was #2 on Glamour magazine’s list of “50 Sexiest Men of 2010,” and he was also #4 on People magazine’s “Most Amazing Bodies” list.  He’s reportedly worth over $30 million – not too shabby for a 19-year-old.  That’s right, he’s nineteen.  And not even “almost twenty” – he’ll be 19 until next February!

What I really like about Taylor is that he works hard.  After making the first Twilight movie, the producers considered re-casting the role of Jacob Black, since in between the first and second movies, Jacob supposedly bulks up and becomes a werewolf (I haven’t read the books and have only seen one of the movies, so pardon me if my Twilight trivia isn’t exactly right), and they thought Taylor might be too scrawny to play the bigger, beefier Jacob.  So Taylor set out to prove them wrong, and after wrapping production of the first movie, he hit the gym, and he hit the gym hard.  He ended up gaining 30 pounds of muscle in a year.  According to the December 2009 issue of Men’s Health, the 5’10″ Taylor went from 140 pounds to 170 pounds, all in muscle mass.  Impressive! (When I first read that, I thought, ‘Cool! I’ve lost more weight than the old, scrawny Taylor, and am only 5 pounds away from losing the new, beefcake Taylor!’  See more fun weight loss comparisons here.)

Ready for some photographic evidence to judge for yourself?

Here you go.  Taylor is on the left, and I’m on the right – just so nobody’s confused!

Oh, but let’s not forget that we may only look alike from a distance, so maybe you should look at smaller photos:

You could even step a few feet back from your monitor to increase the distance.

Since I like to be thorough, here’s some profile pics:

After spending hours scouring the interwebs for Taylor pictures, taking photos of myself, and writing this post, I stand by my initial gut reaction, which is to be flattered, although I don’t see the similarity myself.  But I open the floor (and the comments section) to you:  so, what do you think?

I’ll say this much: I don’t think I’ve ever been compared to a hot piece of 19-year-old Hollywood man-candy before, so…

Keep it up, David!