Mark Zuckerberg created a multibillion-dollar website from his Harvard dorm room and became one of the youngest billionaires in history. If that’s not indicative enough of true tech-industry success, becoming immortalized in wax sure is.
Hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg at the new Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in SF. Pretty quiet guy… pic.twitter.com/orX8RAeMax
— Kurt Wagner (@KurtWagner8) April 23, 2014
On April 23, Madame Tussauds showed off some of the newest figures that will appear in the London-based museum’s next location, Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Zuckerberg joins a legion of wax celebrities in almost 20 locations worldwide. The Tussauds lineup includes history and culture’s most popular figures—the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Di, Michael Jackson, and many more. Joining Zuck at Wednesday’s unveiling were figures of singer Rihanna and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Madame Tussauds unveils wax figure of Zuckerberg in all his hoodie-wearing, barefoot glory. https://t.co/gV4dAVQq3y pic.twitter.com/rwmkZfnCLM
— SFGate.com (@SFGate) April 23, 2014
In front of the sunny San Francisco coastline, the eerily realistic wax replica of Zuckerberg sits cross-legged and barefoot on a red chair, donning his iconic casual uniform: a hoodie and blue jeans. He looks straight ahead and smiles. His hands, of course, cradle a silver laptop.
Fake Zuckerberg took between three and four months to make, according to Lauren Fraher, marketing manager for Madame Tussauds San Francisco. In order for the figures to be as lifelike as possible, a chosen celebrity will be measured more than 200 times before the artists go to work. But given Zuck’s busy schedule, the 20-person crew instead used photographs of the Facebook CEO to construct him.
Creating the wax version of the 29-year-old, a “lifesize replica down to the last freckle,” presumably took an incredible amount of patience. Fraher said each strand of wax Zuckerberg’s hair was inserted by hand over the course of two weeks, one at a time.
The company donated the black T-shirt Zuckerberg wears, though Mashable reports that it’s currently not visible in photos due to copyright issues.
Zuckerberg joins the club of other tech giants to get made into wax figures, which includes Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Madame Tussauds San Francisco will open June 26.
Photo by AlbertoPepe/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
