No, Josh Duhamel and Timothy Olyphant Are NOT the Same Person (One Is Better)

It was said in the movie The Usual Suspects, “A rumor’s not a rumor that doesn’t die.”

In other words, if you keep hearing something, no matter how many times it’s debunked, you start to wonder if it’s true. That’s sort of where we’re currently at with the state of Josh Duhamel/Timothy Olyphant discourse. Duhamel, of course, is the handsome actor from the Transformers movies and his time being married to Fergie, while Olyphant is likely best known for his roles on TV’s Justified and Deadwood, as well as currently playing husband to undead Drew Barrymore on Santa Clarita Diet. And these days, now that both actors are in their 40s and rocking some serious DILF gray in their hair, they’re looking pretty similar. Pretty very similar. And social media? She’s noticed.

And as it turns out, mistaking Duhamel for Olyphant (or vice versa) isn’t even new. Comic and actress Lauren Lapkus was on this beat four whole years ago:

So what gives? Is this our new Dermot Mulroney/Dylan McDermott, except instead of looking vaguely similar and having near-identical names, their names are vaguely familiar but their faces are getting uncanny. We certainly admit that we see a resemblance here, one that is only intensifying with each gracefully-graying red-carpet photo they pause for. This very often happens. I once spent the entire running time of the movie Foxcatcher thinking Sienna Miller was Linda Cardellini. Actors look like each other.

This particular case feels like it has an extra special hook because unless you’re intimately familiar with each other’s careers, you could easily figure one is interchangeable with the other. They’re both handsome, reasonably tall (we’ll get to that) white men around the same age. They’ve both spent their careers waiting for the likes of Colin Farrell and Bradley Cooper to turn down roles before they got a chance at them. They’ve each made one regrettable Garry Marshall ensemble holiday comedy (Josh in New Year’s Eve, Timothy in Mother’s Day). They’ve combined to star in all three feature films Greg Berlanti directed. And currently, both men are featured in very good comedy projects: Duhamel is playing the lead character’s father in Love, Simon, while Olyphant is back for his second season as the long-suffering husband of undead Drew Barrymore on Santa Clarita Diet.

So the questions we have are twofold: 1) Do Josh Duhamel and Timothy Olyphant indeed look exactly alike? And 2) Which one of them is actually superior? There is a correct answer.

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The Tale of the Tape:

• While in photographs these two men might be indistinguishable, you likely wouldn’t ever mistake them in person. If IMDb is to be believed, Olyphant stands at an even six feet tall, while Duhamel looms like a handsome, tanned sasquatch at 6’3 1/2″. Their ages are more similar, with the whippersnapper Duhamel at 45 years old and Olyphant at 49. “Face it, lady, I’m younger and taller!” – Josh Duhamel in Fried Green Tomatoes

Origins:

• The first time anybody saw Timothy Olyphant was likely as the disgustingly young director trying to hire Goldie Hawn to play a mother (gasp!) in The First Wives Club. He also had a one-off role on Sex and the City as a would-be beau for Carrie whose youth eventually became a detriment.
• Like many great actors (more than you think!), Josh Duhamel emerged from the world of daytime soap operas. He played the dreamy Leo du Pres on All My Children from 1999-2002, winning a Daytime Emmy Award on his way out the door.
• ADVANTAGE: Duhamel +3

Breakthroughs:

• Olyphant likely first caught mainstream eyeballs as the (SPOILER ALERT but damn, it’s been over 20 years) killer in Scream 2, side-by-side with the transcendent Laurie Metcalf.
• Duhamel’s breakthrough is tougher to pin down. He held down the lead role on NBC’s Las Vegas from 2003-2008, a steady and noteworthy job on a show that we don’t know anybody who watched. More likely, it was his roles in 2004’s Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and 2007’s Transformers that made him an actor we recognize.
• ADVANTAGE: Olyphant +2

Best Work:

• Olyphant’s career has had a lot of peaks: 1999’s Go, where he played a charismatic drug dealer who pioneered exciting new ways for Santa hats to seem sexy; 2000’s The Broken Hearts Club where he played a khaki-loyal gay guy who’s into photography, The Carpenters, and finding a way to responsibly bone Andrew Keegan; 2009’s A Perfect Getaway, where he plays a boastful outdoorsman who is either the dreamiest man of a man you’ve ever met or a serial killer, and it’s up to you to figure it out. And of course on TV, he’s been the star of Deadwood and Justified, two of the best TV shows of the 2000s.
• I mean … honestly, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton is a very good romantic comedy. And he’s not the problem with the Transformers movies. And … okay, actually, he’s quite good in Love, Simon.
• ADVANTAGE: Olyphant +5

Regrets:

• Look, nobody came out of Dreamcatcher smelling like a rose. And you could see why he did Live Free or Die Hard, but that was also a mistake. And he brushes up against problematic playing a brain-damaged character in This Is Where I Leave You.
• FOUR Transformers movies. That movie where he and Katherine Heigl are forced to raise a baby together where half the jokes are poop. The romantic comedy he made with Kristen Bell, When in Rome, which sits at 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• ADVANTAGE: Olyphant +1

2018 Highlight:

• With the return of Santa Clarita Diet, Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore pick up TV’s most embattled but loving relationship. Joel is dedicated to Sheila and to getting her through her zombie phase as safely as possible. His sense of nervous panic at every story turn is a delight to watch.
• Josh Duhamel plays a great dad in Love, Simon, but he’s drawn with some realism too. He’s not perfect. He cracks a billion bad gay jokes that keep his closeted son at a distance. He’s crap with video editing. He thinks Grindr is Gay Facebook. But he’s trying! And he’s also insanely hot, and all of Simon’s friends probably have massive crushes on this DILF who walks among them.
• ADVANTAGE: push

The Jennifer Garner Factor:

• Something we realized as we were coming up with this comparison: both Josh Duhamel and Timothy Olyphant have romanced Jennifer Garner on-screen. Obviously, Duhamel and Garner are married in Love, Simon, and they give a warm, flirty, relaxed portrait of a married couple with two perfect and quirky children. Timothy Olyphant, however, played the best friend of Garner’s late husband in the 2003 film Catch and Release. This was the directorial debut of Erin Brockovich screenwriter Susannah Grant, and Garner and Olyphant had some good chemistry happening, but the movie was not good. Like, bordering on very bad. It was a real shame.
• ADVANTAGE: Duhamel +2

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Verdict: Three things we now know are true:

1. Josh Duhamel and Timothy Olyphant are two different people.
2. Salt-and-pepper DILFs tend to age towards each other in the looks department, especially if they are squinty of eye and swoopy of hair.
3. Timothy Olyphant is CLEARLY the superior of these hot-dad twins. Tell the people.

Stream Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix