This was my first piece of 2024, published in the Irish Times on January 11th.
Since I published it, avaticians are becoming a “thing” in India’s elections, see this Al-Jazeera article from February 20th.
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Politicians and leaders have frequently used body doubles throughout history. One of the most celebrated Irish cases was that of George Brendan Nolan of Ballinasloe.
As a child, he emigrated to New York with his mother, but returned to Dublin in 1921 at the age of 17 and joined the Abbey Theatre. He also became a courier and then doppelgänger for the revolutionary leader Michael Collins, before fleeing back to the US via Canada with a British bounty on his head.
Nolan adopted the new name George Brent. He proceeded to conquer Broadway and Hollywood, appearing in 88 films, 11 of which teamed him up with Betty Davis with whom he had a steamy two-year affair amid his five marriages. A licensed pilot, he largely avoided using a double for his screen stunts.
Nevertheless, stand-in doubles have been routine in Hollywood. Digitisation and computer-generated imagery are not only making stunts even more spectacular but completely replacing the need for human actors with fully animated avatars in scenes from, for example, the Marvel superhero movies, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
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