Look-Alike Banks on Her Resemblance to First Lady

When people first started commenting on her striking resemblance to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Teresa Barnwell shrugged it off.

But then the Costa Mesa resident decided to capitalize on the similarity. She signed on with a celebrity look-alike agency and now has on her resume appearances on the “Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” “Hard Copy” and several sitcoms.

This week she is scheduled to fly to Argentina, where she will portray the First Lady in a made-for-TV movie.

“It’s scary sometimes,” said the 40-year-old Barnwell. “It gives me the chills that somebody in Argentina actually knows about me and gave me a call.”

Barnwell is learning to enjoy the attention, though, and says she has earned more than $20,000 in her look-alike role.

Her jobs have taken her across the nation--to a ranch in Texas, for example, where she stood at the entrance with a cardboard cut-out of Bill Clinton and waved to arriving guests. On another occasion she had an opportunity to shake hands with Gen. Colin L. Powell, who remarked that she looked “just like the real Hillary.”

In Washington, Barnwell said, she was stopped outside the White House by a Secret Service agent who told her his heart nearly stopped when he saw her alone, before realizing she was not the real First Lady.

That inspired Barnwell’s husband to get into the act too. Now, when he accompanies her occasionally on her travels, he wears an earphone and carries a walkie-talkie.

Barnwell says she hopes one day to meet the real First Lady and President Clinton.

Meanwhile, she isn’t giving up her regular job at Newsmakers, a Costa Mesa company that reprints magazine and newspaper articles.

As for moonlighting as a look-alike, she admits that demand for her act could disappear if President Clinton isn’t reelected. “If that happens,” she said, “so be it. It’s been fun.”