Man Has Been Told He Looks Like Will Smith His Entire Life. At 18, He Made a Career for Himself as a Look-alike of the Actor

A man from England says he’s been compared to Will Smith for as long as he can remember — and once he turned 18, he decided to turn that resemblance into a job.

Shad Ellis, who was born and raised in England, told the BBC that the comparisons became impossible to ignore in 1997, when posters for Men in Black were everywhere — including across the London Underground, where he worked at the time.

“I had regular customers coming through the station saying, ‘Oh my god, you look like Will Smith,’ ” Shad said to the outlet. “They’d call me ‘Will’ jokingly, and I thought nothing of it: ‘Okay, there’s a little similarity, that’s all it is.’ ”

Ellis said the idea became more real when a stranger approached him and mentioned knowing someone who made money as a celebrity look-alike — and suggested Ellis could do the same.

Curious, Ellis recreated some of Smith’s well-known magazine poses in photos, according to the BBC — and quickly started getting booked.

“Within a week, I had my first job, which was the front cover of an electrical magazine, as they were kind of re-enacting the Men in Black posters, except we were holding these electronic wind-up torches,” he said.

“From there, I started meeting people, networking, then I’d have jobs, and I’d meet more people, and it just grew,” added Ellis.

Years later, Ellis said things took off even more during a night out when his friends pushed him to perform Smith’s song “Miami” during karaoke — which led his agent to start booking him tribute-artist gigs, per the BBC.

“I do anything that you want Will Smith to do, that you couldn’t afford to get Will Smith to do,” Ellis told the outlet. “So I do a lot of corporate events, end-of-year work parties, weddings, private birthday functions, bar mitzvahs.”

Still, Ellis said he’s turned down plenty of offers over the years — especially in 2022, after Smith, 57, slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars following a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

“I turn down so much work because I’m quite protective of him and his brand. [Requestors] have to kind of respect the boundaries and stuff,” Ellis told the BBC, adding that he refuses to be “the guy that’s been cashing in.”

In 2022, Ellis was hired as a body double for Pole to Pole, Smith’s National Geographic series in which he trekked across seven continents over 100 days, the BBC reported. Ellis said he crossed paths with Smith multiple times during filming and eventually asked one of Smith’s managers for a private moment — no cameras.

That request was granted, Ellis recalled, and the two took a walk together on a beach in Papua New Guinea on the final day of filming. Ellis said he told Smith: “I just want to say how thankful I am and how grateful I am to you just for being you, because you’ve enabled me — a person that you had no idea probably exists — to do some amazing things.”

Ellis said Smith responded positively, and the two have reconnected in the years since.

Ellis told the BBC that while he still works for the London Underground alongside his look-alike work, he plans to keep going as long as he can.

“Every year I wake up, and I’m like, ‘Am I going to keep going with this?’ Then it’s like, ‘You know what? I’m going to keep doing this until I don’t look like him — or all my hair falls out,’ ” he said.