A Tom Cruise look-alike had fans completely caught off-guard when he stepped up to the plate to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the San Francisco Giants’ Thursday game.
The celebrity doppelgänger, dressed as Cruise’s iconic “Top Gun” character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, was making an appearance in celebration of original blockbuster, which marks its 40th anniversary this year — and fans on social media thought he could actually be the real thing.
“Is that really Tom Cruise?” one person queried on Instagram, while another wrote, “He nails the look, laugh and smile of Tom Cruise.”
A third quipped, “What? That was the spitting image of Tom Cruise!”
“Dude looks more like Tom Cruise than Tom Cruise does… I literally thought this was AI lol” a fourth social media user remarked.
Some were simply confused. “Is that an impersonator or is this AI? I can’t tell any more,” one person admitted.
The professional impersonator’s name is actually Jerome LeBlanc, and he goes by the moniker “California Tom Cruise.”
In an interview with Cockpit USA, LeBlanc once admitted he’d stumbled upon the opportunity to simply look like the “Risky Business” actor — specifically as “Maverick” — as a career.
“When I moved from Montreal to Los Angeles, many people started telling me I looked like Tom Cruise,” he divulged.
“So, I put on the flight suit uniform from ‘Top Gun,’ and tried street performing. To my surprise, I did so unbelievably well — I made more than I did while bartending,” he added.
LeBlanc also admitted that he’s “not necessarily mistaken for Tom Cruise,” given a roughly 30-year age gap with the 64-year-old actor.
“But I do notice a lot of double takes and a lot of strangers approaching me to share that they think I look so much like the actor,” he said.
The entertainer — who now has a thriving social media career on TikTok, where he regularly updates over 770,000 followers — has also shared that he doesn’t actually have a celebrity he’d prefer to meet in real life.
“I don’t really have an interest in meeting a specific celebrity,” he said. “Sometimes, with public figures it’s better to leave them to the imagination. Because, like myself, I’m more than what I post. And either that can be appreciated or disappointing.”
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