ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996              TAG: 9611180070
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: MANASSAS (AP)
SOURCE: RICHARD HILL THE POTOMAC NEWS

SUCH ROSIE CHEEKS, HANDS, EYES, HAIR ...

Rosie O'Donnell and Edie McCathran: separated at birth?

As the television talk show star gazed across a studio audience in New York filled with her look-alikes Thursday, few were as close a match as McCathran, 20, of Manassas.

When she's out in public, McCathran gets plenty of double-takes, outright stares and the whispers of strangers convinced they have spotted the real-life Rosie, the Rubenesque actress-comedian with the thick Brooklyn accent.

``Do you know you look just like Rosie O'Donnell?'' total strangers sometimes ask her.

Yes, she knows.

``I go to the bank or anything, and people just look at me all the time,'' McCathran said. ``I mean, I go up there, and one of the girls I don't really know, one of the tellers, every time I go in, she says, `I think it's Rosie.'''

McCathran was among dozens of Rosie look-alikes selected for the special appearance in the audience during O'Donnell's program. Being dead ringers for Rosie won McCathran and dozens of other women two days in Manhattan, replete with shopping.

McCathran, a title clerk at a Manassas auto dealership, has the same sharp and pleasant smile and pretty but unintimidating everywoman quality as O'Donnell. She first noticed the resemblance in her senior high pictures.

Since the 1980s, when O'Donnell got her first television break on the situation comedy ``Gimme a Break,'' McCathran has followed the career of her favorite star.

``I can relate to a lot of things she says on a lot of things. I guess it's just how she views the world,'' McCathran said. ``She's not afraid of being herself.

``Co-workers say it's not just that I look like her, but I act like her.''

McCathran's entree to meet O'Donnell face-to-familiar-face came after friends mailed her portrait to the producers of the Rosie O'Donnell Show in mid-October.

LENGTH: Short :   48 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Edie McCathran appeared Thursday as a look-alike on 
          Rosie O'Donnell's TV show. color.