COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Do you look like someone? I do. I’ve been told I look like different people over the years, but mostly I get Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Teresa Barnwell looks a lot like someone. I’ll give you a hint. If she walked though the front door of the State Department, everyone would jump up, stand at attention and say, “Good morning, Madam Secretary.”

Yes, it’s true. Teresa Barnwell is a dead ringer for Hillary Clinton. Barnwell lives in Costa Mesa and was selling ads for the Daily Pilot when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. Pretty soon, people were not only telling her she looked like Hillary Clinton, but sometimes they thought she was Hillary.

I couldn’t quite tell from the picture that ran with last week’s story about Barnwell in the Pilot, so my little mouse and I went to the Internet and checked her out. It’s pretty amazing. If Hillary Clinton looks 100% like Hillary Clinton, Teresa Barnwell looks 88.7% like her. Now, granted it’s not the new, more mature, former-candidate- now-Secretary of State Hillary — but the early ’90s, bobbed hair, let-me-take-a-whack-at-this- health-care-thing Hillary.

Still and all, she is scary close.

Barnwell’s career as a faux Hillary has waxed and waned along with Hillary Clinton’s career. But between last year’s presidential campaign and now the Secretary of State thing, it’s all Hillary/all the time for Barnwell.

She has done a boatload of television appearances, including some 40 star turns, sort of, on “The Tonight Show,” and has posed as Hillary around the world, in Australia, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands. I’m not sure why people in the Netherlands would want Hillary Clinton at their company picnic, but if they’re good with it, I say why not.

Teresa’s very first gig as Hillary-Lite was at a church dinner in Anaheim, where she got forty bucks to stand up and do a First Lady-like wave to the crowd. She signed with a Newport Beach celebrity look-alike agency called Book-A-Look, and while the Hillary calls were a fun diversion, they were still not enough to live on.

But late one night in 1997, a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky stepped through the door of the Oval Office and walked into history. With the Lewinsky scandal in full bloom, Teresa’s Barnwell’s phone was ringing off the hook. Everyone wanted a Hillary and a Monica of their own at their party or their charity event or on their show.

Then, just when Teresa thought her days as Hillary were numbered, it happened again, when Clinton jumped into the presidential race. Monica Lewinsky was long forgotten, but now Barnwell was waving it up with Barack Obama look-alikes.

Today, in between her Hillary moments, Barnwell is writing a book about her sort-of life as First Lady and now Secretary of State. She didn’t get much done on the book last week, since she spent the week doing her best Hillary on a celebrity look-alike edition of “Family Feud.” Good answer.

All told, it’s been quite a ride going through life as someone she isn’t. “I never imagined in my wildest dreams what it would turn into,” Barnwell said.

But this business of someone looking like someone else is interesting, no? Sometimes you’re amazed at how much someone looks like someone else, but the first person you mention it to says, “Yeah, I guess.”

That’s because it’s pretty subjective, except for the rare instance of someone like Teresa Barnwell, who really is a dead ringer for someone. It did get me to wondering though, and that meant back to the Internet to check out a number of celebrity look-alike agencies.

The largest agency I found, www.lookalike.com, had more look-alikes than there are celebrities, which is a lot. Actors, athletes, politicians, performers, world-figures, you name it, from A to Z. You can rent Paula Abdul and Paula Abdul No. 2, in addition to Beyonce’, followed by Beyonce’ Nos. 2, 3 and 4.

Name a famous person, alive or dead, and there is someone out there who looks like them, or thinks they do anyway. To be honest, in most cases, I’d call it a resemblance. But of the three Hillary Clinton’s available for rent, Teresa Barnwell is head and shoulders the best and the only one I would call a twin sister, sister.

I mean, we’re talking soul mate, body mate, everything mate. In most cases, there is one look-alike per celeb, including a few celebs for which having even one surprises me, like Engelbert Humperdinck and Gloria Estefan. Is there a lot of demand for Gloria Estefan look-alikes? Where does that happen exactly? The celebs that are dripping with look-alikes are pretty much the ones you’d expect. You can pick from eight Elvises and eight Sinatras, five Michael Jacksons and four Elton Johns.

What is pretty funny though is the description that accompanies each impersonator, which I quickly discovered is exactly the same for each look-alike. So what you end up with is — “This Pope Benedict XVI look-alike is excellent for corporate and private events, company picnics, trade shows, clubs fundraisers and advertising promotions,” followed by: “This Shakira look-alike is excellent for corporate and private events, company picnics, trade shows, club fundraisers and advertising promotions.”

Just a minute here. You mean to tell me there isn’t one Pope Benedict or Shakira or out there who refuses to do club fundraisers? Every single Albert Einstein and Janis Joplin is perfectly fine with company picnics? I don’t believe that.

So there you have it. Things are not always what they seem. Neither are people. Do what you were meant to do, be who you were meant to be, unless being someone else is a better gig. In that case, get an agent, and wave.

I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.