| Share it

ADVERTISEMENT

DAYTON, Ohio – From ruggedly handsome looks to exemplary thespian ability, area carpenter Mike Kirkbride has repeatedly and incorrectly likened himself to every aspect of television star Josh Holloway, according to friends, family and coworkers of the 33-year-old father of two.

Outside of coincidentally sporting scruffily-kept dark whiskers, every person close to Kirkbride has repeatedly told him that he has little in common with the television star. Despite negative feedback, Kirkbride insists he shares a facial structure and body type with Holloway and that many strangers approach him thinking the Dayton man to be Holloway.

“Man, people stop me all the time on the street, and they’re like, ‘Are you that guy from Lost?’” said Kirkbride, whose friends and family were unable to recall such an incident. “I tell them I’m not him, but then I usually say some Sawyer line, you know, just to make their day.”

Kirkbride has also compared his self-acclaimed dramatic deftness to that of Holloway’s, often nearly replicating lines from Holloway’s Lost character, Sawyer.

“It seems like ever since he started watching that show (Lost), he sarcastically calls everyone ‘Jack’ when he gets upset with them,” said Fred Lohman, owner of Lohman Construction, who employs Kirkbride as a general carpenter. “I watched the show once to see what he was talking about but I never saw the character that looked like him. I guess he wasn’t in that episode.”

Since viewing the first season of Lost in 2004, Kirkbride has tried to replicate as many attributes as possible of the show’s Sawyer character, most notably attempting to assign disparaging nicknames to people he interacts with on a daily basis. From referring to a new drywall contractor as “Newby McDrywall” to identifying a long-employed bricklayer as “ancient bricklayer,” Kirkbride has missed entirely the more-clever and often pop culture-referencing nicknames dished out by Holloway’s character.

“I think when he tries to call somebody a nickname like Sawyer does, he thinks it’s funnier than it is,” said fellow Lohman employee Sam Reed of Kirkbride’s portrayal of a Sawyer-like voice, which unintentionally comes across as a solid impersonation of a Texas cattle rancher. “I told Mike, ‘Look, why don’t you just shave? You’re beard doesn’t really look like [Holloway’s],’ and he just unbuttoned the top four buttons of his shirt and stormed off.”

At home, Kirkbride never misses an episode of Lost, and his wife regularly joins him. However, she has begun to grow tired of her husband’s nonstop insistence of his similarity to Sawyer.

“I like watching Lost with him, but afterwards he seems to call me ‘Kate’ a lot,” said Jill Kirkbride, Mike Kirkbride’s wife of seven years. “At first I laughed, but that was five years ago.”

Kirkbride’s remaining close friends also routinely have pointed out the many differences between Kirkbride and actor Josh Holloway, who is the subject thousands of fan-created websites dedicated to discussing his favorable appearance and ability as an actor. Kirkbride, meanwhile, is the subject of his own blog, “Sawyer look-a-like dude”, which he updates regularly with mostly fictitious stories of his interactions with fans and crudely Photoshop-edited images meant to portray him appearing in various locations with Josh Holloway.

Still, Kirkbride is not deaf to the criticisms, often trying to find similar clothing to that which Sawyer wears or showing his 68-year-old barber a picture of Holloway in order to replicate the actor’s hairstyle. Perhaps also due to unfavorable feedback regarding his attempted likening to Holloway, last fall Kirkbride, seemingly in an effort to replicate a famous feat of Holloway’s Lost character, tried to embark on a polar bear hunting trip until he found out the species was endangered and illegal to kill.