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15 Famous Movie Impostors

Sometimes, a ruse is so convincing that everyone is fooled, swept up by the yank of the proverbial rug.

The Imposter
Photo: Picturehouse Entertainment

This week sees the release of the so-wild-it-must-be true documentary The Imposter, which tells the tale of Frédéric Bourdin, an international master of disguise who, in the 1990s, impersonated a missing Texas boy, one of countless identities the chameleonic subject assumed. Bourdin’s story may be all too real, but his is one of many impostor tales we’ve seen committed to film, as so much suspense rests on characters not being who they seem. In the cases of stars in drag, stars undercover, and stars on the run, viewers are usually in on the incognito secret. Sometimes, though, the ruse is so convincing that everyone is fooled, swept up by the yank of the proverbial rug.


Mata Hari

Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931)

In the risqué role that sexed up her most commercially successful film, Greta Garbo is all sparkle and sizzle, forever popularizing her title character as history’s foremost femme fatale. Mata Hari may completely look the part of a dancing courtesan, who masters the come-hither stare and handily seduces Ramon Navarro’s Lt. Rosanoff, but she’s actually a trained German spy, whose World War I espionage ultimately led to her execution.


Catch Me If You Can

Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002)

In the early 2000s, Leonardo DiCaprio struggled to find roles impervious to his enduring boyishness, a quality that hampered films like Gangs of New York. But his youthful look proved perfect for Catch Me If You Can’s Frank Abagnale, a fact-based, self-made playboy who posed as everything from a pilot to a doctor to live his dream life. Fraudulent checks have never been so fun.


Spellbound

Gregory Peck in Spellbound (1945)

Many remember Gregory Peck going undercover as a Jew in Gentlemen’s Agreement, but he also played the dual role of Dr. Edwardes and John Ballantyne in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, a film that characteristically made the protagonist’s guilt uncertain. Are the motives of Edwardes/Ballantyne sinister? Was he wrongfully accused? Peck and co-star Ingrid Bergman are dependably excellent, but this psychoanalytical thriller’s best asset is a pivotal dream sequence, designed by none other than Salvador Dalí.


The Saint

Val Kilmer in The Saint (1997)

A film adaptation of the age-old stories that spawned a radio show and a UK TV series, The Saint stars Val Kilmer as an expert thief whose many guises surely kept the hair and makeup department busy. Among his looks are a science dweeb with a combover, a Fabio-esque artist, and even a doppelganger of co-star Rade Šerbedžija.

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Just One of the Guys

Joyce Hyser in Just One of the Guys (1985)

In a premise that’d be mimicked by everything from Never Been Kissed to She’s the Man, Just One of the Guys stars Joyce Hyser as a young journalist who butches up as a high school boy to—whaddaya know?—get a little damned respect. Marked by a full-frontal reveal that had hordes of dudes hitting the fast-forward button, the movie became a cult hit, but Hyser fell into obscurity.


The Usual Suspects

Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects (1995)

With a memorable gesture of breath upon his fingers, Kevin Spacey brought immortal life to a character whose name has only seen its fearsomeness matched by that of Lord Voldemort. Who is Keyser Söze? It’s the spoiler everyone tried to keep buttoned up in the mid-1990s, before shocking their friends with a screening of Bryan Singer’s debut feature. With a limp and feigned plight of stupidity, Spacey pulled off the ultimate fake-out.


Some Like It Hot

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Some Like It Hot is the drag comedy by which all others are always judged, from To Wong Foo… to White Chicks. “Nobody’s perfect,” goes the subtly taboo last line, but Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are something close to it as Joe and Jerry, aka Josephine and Geraldine, two struggling musicians who pose as ladies while on the run from the Chicago mob. Billy Wilder’s zippy film is often viewed as a Marilyn Monroe showcase, so enamored are its stars of her sultry crooner, Sugar Kane, but Curtis and Lemmon steal the show with their rapport, right down to the last wig removal.


The Silence of the Lambs

Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

No, Hannibal Lecter never hid behind any false persona—his penchant for wolfing down human organs with beans and wine was fully disclosed. But when given an opportunity to escape his luxury cage in this classic thriller’s climax, the well-mannered cannibal didn’t hesitate to peel off a cop’s face, and wear it as a disguise before making his exit.

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Yentl

Barbra Streisand in Yentl (1983)

The most telling edit in Yentl is the last, which takes you from a legendary, peternatural closing note to a directorial title card. Why? Because this epic gender-bender is so bursting with Barbra it could only have been helmed by the diva herself. Streisand plays the Jewish girl of the title, who dons men’s clothes so she can get a proper education. Reading, writing, and arithmetic ensue, as well as scene after sexually confusing scene with co-star Many Patinkin.


Mission: Impossible

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible (1996)

These days, Tom Cruise is in the business of saving face, but near the turn of the millenium, he was all about obscuring it, from Vanilla Sky to Minority Report to Mission: Impossible, wherein his IMF agent, Ethan Hunt, kept disguises in his bag of high-tech tricks, posing as the likes of Jon Voight’s mentor-turned-traitor. If only rubber masks got you child custody points.


The Importance of Being Earnest

Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Forget the 2002 misfire with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett. The definitive screen version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is Anthony Asquith’s Criterion-anointed British adaptation, which stars Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison as little white liars John Worthing and Algernon, both of whom pose as men named Ernest in their respective quests to woo the ladies in their lives. Playing characters far younger than themselves, Redgrave and Denison can’t outstage Edith Evans’s beloved performance as the exasperated Lady Bracknell, but they come close.


Twelfth Night

Klara Luchko in Twelfth Night (1955)

Twelfth Night is arguably Shakespeare’s most popular comedy, yet so few versions of it have made it to the big screen. There’s a 1996 version with Helena Bonham Carter, and then there’s this Russian adaptation with international starlet Klara Luchko, who takes on the roles of Viola and her male twin, Sebastian. The language of the Bard’s alarming, gender-confused humor proves universal in Luchko’s hands, which, for a man, are suspiciously soft indeed.

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Mrs. Doubtfire

Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

There were ample men in drag who came so close to making this list, including Gael García Bernal in Bad Education, and, of course, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. But let’s hear it for Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, a film whose lasting impression is proven by its quotability. Forever changing the concept of hot flashes with his burning-boobs mishap, Williams’s cross-dresser ups the ante with a fabulous makeover interlude, experimenting with looks from Babs to Yenta.


A Tale of Two Cities

Ronald Colman in A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

As the story goes, Ronald Colman had long wanted to portray Sydney Carton, Charles Dickens’s famed martyr in A Tale of Two Cities. Taking the place of imprisoned Charles Darnay (Donald Woods) in the thick of the French Revolution, Colman’s Carton gives filmic life to the line, “It’s a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done; it’s a far, far greater rest I go to than I have ever known.” Whether you caught it on the big screen or in your middle-school English class, it’s memorable stuff.


X-Men

Rebecca Romijn in X-Men (2000)

It’s only right that we top our impostor list with the mother of all shape-shifters, who’s spent the last decade taunting fanboys with her scaly, blue magnificence. Jennifer Lawrence may have inherited the multi-hour makeup process for her role in X-Men: First Class, but it’s slinky Rebecca Romijn who’ll be remembered as this character, a mutant who can take the form of anyone, yet looks best being herself.

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

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