At the California Cryobank single women and infertile couples can choose a donor who looks like their favourite actor, athlete, musician or television star. The clinic allows them to choose from “anyone famous enough to be found on the web” and has hundreds of celebrity doppelgangers on its books.

But there are also donors who resemble less obvious leading men such as billionaire Bill Gates, actor Rick Moranis, director Quentin Tarantino, Brazilian footballer Ronaldo and Lou Ferrigno, the bodybuilder famous for playing The Incredible Hulk.

Affleck, the star of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, is the most popular choice along with American Football quarterback Brett Favre and Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Luke Walton. The cryobank also allows women and infertile couples to choose a Hollywood hybrid, a donor whose features combine likenesses to several celebrities, perhaps Robert Downey Jr’s eyes with Matthew McConaughey’s chin. They can even choose a young version of Gladiator star Russell Crowe, or one who resembles the actor as he looks now. Among the more obscure choices on offer are donors who look like Wolfgang Van Halen, son of guitarist Eddie Van Halen, and actor Travis Van Winkle who was in the Transformers movie. Under US law donors are anonymous but their celebrity monikers let clients know what they’re getting.

Scott Brown, a Cryobank spokesman, told the Daily Telegraph: “People want to make some connection to the donor and this gives them something tangible. It personalises and humanises the process. I don’t think it’s about designer babies, it’s about communication. We’re not suggesting your child will look like a celebrity. Genetics is a complicated business. I think the public perception is baby shopping and that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

More than 750 clients have used the service since it started in the summer. The question now is whether the babies do actually look like celebrities? The service only began in July so no one will know until April.

Katie Holmes, Ben Affleck, 50 Cent and Dakota Fanning are among the A-listers taking their films to the Sundance Film Festival. The festival’s premieres section includes 13 films screening out of competition, among them The Company Men, a corporate-downsizing tale starring Ben, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello and Tommy Lee Jones.

Katie joins John C Reilly and Kevin Kline for the gigolo story The Extra Man, while 50 Cent appears with Chace Crawford, Emma Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland in the crime drama Twelve from director Joel Schumacher.
Dakota and her Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart team up for director Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, a portrait of rocker Joan Jett as she forms her band in the 1970s.

Among actors directing films are Entourage star Adrian Grenier, whose documentary Teenage Paparazzo premieres at Sundance. The film is an exploration of celebrity culture, inspired by a 13-year-old boy who snapped a photo of Grenier. Philip Seymour Hoffman makes his directing debut with the Sundance premiere Jack Goes Boating, in which he stars with Amy Ryan in a story of romance and betrayal involving two New York couples.

Alongside such Hollywood regulars, Sundance is adding a section called Next, featuring eight films shot on ultra low budgets of less than 500,000 dollars, mostly made by unknown filmmakers and actors. “We’re a discovery festival, but we’re not just about the discovery of films. We’re about the discovery of talent,” said festival director John Cooper. “We wanted to make sure talent wasn’t getting past us because they’re working in a low-budget form.”

Sorry everyone!
I’ve been neglecting this website a little bit. I sincerely apologize, tons of updates coming shortly!

Andre Agassi could have expected that his confession that he took crystal meth would excite discussion. But the revelation about his wig-wearing is at least as fascinating to many people.

I remember watching the great Agassi at Wimbledon in the 1990s and the way that extraordinary mane of hair, seemingly strapped on with a hair band, would swing around like a dead animal. In his new book, Open, he calls the arrangement a “toupee”, which seems a bit of an understatement. It was clearly a substantial structure. At one point – after Agassi used the wrong hair rinse – the hairpiece threatened to fall apart and required 20 hairclips and the help of his brother Philly to pin it in place.

The tone in which the Las Vegas-born star relates the tale shows an appealing strain of self-mockery which is in marked contrast to the tight-lipped style of most Hollywood types. Actors often go to enormous lengths to conceal what’s really going on on top of their heads and can get quite peevish when asked about it.

Take Ben Affleck, for example. People who keep a close eye on these matters – and there are lots of them, especially on the internet – say his hairline appears to have changed shape, suspiciously, and that in some pictures some of his hair appears not to have a beginning. Mr Affleck is married to Jennifer Garner. Probably only Ms Garner knows the true state of his hair.

Hello everyone,
My name is Tammy and I am the new owner Ben Affleck Online. Stay tuned for TONS of new updates coming soon! I hope to make this the largest Ben Affleck resource online.

I just added over 200+ photos of all the events Ben attended so far this year. More events are coming soon, as well as more 2009 events as they show up. Enjoy!

Gallery Link
Public Appearances > Events from 2009