Everyone loves a good impersonation. And by good, I mean perfect. Sure, your mates might share a laugh when you do your crappy copy of Sean Connery, but you know you’ve hit the big time when you’re constantly surrounded at parties with people asking you to record voice messages and what now. Which is something I imagine happens to Charlie Hopkinson a lot, going by his killer impersonations in this video.
Entitled “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Recasting”, the video sees Hopkinson do his best impersonations of Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Rickman, Christopher Walken, Aaron Paul (better known as Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad) and various others, as they audition for the role of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. His reproductions of Freeman and Paul are scarily uncanny, while his Caine and Rickman are pretty darn good too.
Going by his YouTube channel, which is packed with clips of Hopkinson cracking out impersonation after impersonation, I get the impression (heh) that this video is an attempt to dress up his show reel and draw more attention to his talents.
The verdict? It worked beautifully.