Depp's Doppelganger Doing Boffo Business

After wrapping up his busiest month yet as a Johnny Depp impersonator, 44-year-old showbiz veteran Danny Lopez is finding this gig more profitable than those involving a Beatle, a Monkey and a Rolling Stone.

It’s a rare thing for someone who looks so much like a celebrity that they can earn a living impersonating them to be born on the exact same date as their famous quarry. But that’s the case with 44-year-old Great Falls, Montana resident Danny Lopez, who was born on June 9th, 1963, the same date as actor Johnny Depp. January, 2008 was Lopez’s busiest month ever as a Depp impersonator, with twelve corporate appearances for companies such as Hyatt and Carfax.com. He’s also appearing this week on a series of special male vs. female celebrity impersonator episodes of the syndicated TV game show Family Feud. And he will certainly get some attention this coming summer with a cameo in the Steve Carell comedy Get Smart; he plays a car wash worker who looks like… Johnny Depp. This is not the first go-round at celebrity impersonation for Lopez, who filmed his first TV commercial when he was seven. Before he hit his stride with Depp duty, Lopez was a member of three different rock’n roll tribute bands: Backbeat (as George Harrison), The Missing Links (as Davey Jones) and Satisfaction (as Keith Richards). That’s right, in the second irony to go along with the birthday date overlap, Lopez has played both Depp and his infamous Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End cameo co-star Richards. It was in fact the Harrison gig that led to the Depp one, as fans at concerts kept telling him that, in that garb, he looked more like Depp. Lopez also knows a celebrity or two himself. According to the Great Falls Tribune, it was actor Dennis Quaid who recommended that the southern California native, tired of the hectic pace of life there, buy a house in Big Country. Lopez tells the paper he has yet to meet Depp, but the actor is apparently aware of his lookalike shadow. Up next for Lopez is a February 22nd taped appearance on The Maury Povich show, some weekend work at one of the casinos in Cripple Creek, CO and a tentatively booked engagement at an Academy Awards party in Los Angeles on Sunday.

*FilmStew.com*