It might as well have been Celine Dion walking into the Coffee Tree at Bloor and Jane Streets Tuesday afternoon.The resemblance is striking.
Both the French Canadian pop phenomenon and actor, singer Laura Landauer are willowy in stature; they've both got light brown hair highlighted blonde and a bright-eyed smile. Even their mannerisms are similar.
Perhaps people are quick to make the connection, mused Landauer, because she's been impersonating Dion for the past four years.
"It's been a crazy month," enthused Landauer as she settled into a couch with a cup of tea.
The Annette and Jane Street area resident appeared on Ellen, Entertainment Tonight and its counterpart Entertainment Tonight Canada and performed at the Centre Piece Gala for the Inside and Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival.
She's been busy promoting her appearance in The Love Guru, Mike Myers's latest film in theatres June 20. It's the story of Pitka, an American who was left at the gates of ashram in India as a child and raised by gurus. He moves to Canada to seek fame and fortune in the self-help business. His first challenge is to settle a rift between a Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player, Darren Roanoke, and his estranged wife, Prudence, who's left him for a rival skater named Jacques Grande, played by Justin Timberlake.
Landauer plays Dion in a concert scene during which Timberlake's character, a huge fan, rushes the stage and dances to her singing 'I Drove All Night.'
"Celine," he exclaims, "It is my day of lucky, hahaha."
"I'm not a star struck person," Landauer revealed. "Mike Myers was so nice, very personable. I only encountered good things."
Landauer assumes Myers discovered her as Dion on one of her many YouTube videos. The concert scene was filmed at the Guvernment last October over two days. Although she brought her own costumes, Myers had everything picked out for her to wear.
"This was his baby, you could tell. He's got his hands on everything," Landauer said.
Landauer impressed the filmmakers so much that they invited her to New York City in January to shoot some further scenes. She has yet to see the final product.
"I don't know what'll be shown. I did a lot so we'll see. I had a ball. That Justin Timberlake, he can move. He plays this Quebecois hockey player. You'd never recognize him as Justin Timberlake."
She wasn't nervous, her confidence bolstered by the designer dress and thousand dollar shoes she was wearing.
"They had a great stage set up with all these people. I couldn't wait to get up there," she said.
Landauer grew up in Montreal in the '80s. She had dark curly hair about the same time Dion did.
"People would stop me on the street and tell me I looked like her," she said.
Years later, after she had moved to Toronto and finished theatre school, an Elvis impersonator friend of hers dared her to enter the world of impersonating. First, she embodied the female Elvis, then Cher and now Celine. "I have a really good ear. I can pick up dialects, characteristics really well," she said.
Landauer has never met Dion nor has she seen her perform, although, she's got tickets to her show in August. She's a little apprehensive though.
"If I see her will something be lost?"