Celebrity Number Six

The image of fabric posted to the internet (left) and the original image of Leticia Sardá

Celebrity Number Six (sometimes abbreviated C6) is the name given to a previously-unidentified face on a fabric print, the subject of a years-long lost media mystery. In 2020, Reddit user u/TontsaH posted to the subreddit r/TipOfMyTongue asking for help in identifying eight faces depicted on a set of curtains they owned. While seven of them were quickly identified as six actors and models prominent in the mid-2000s, one proved far more difficult to identify, leading to the creation of a dedicated subreddit, r/CelebrityNumberSix. After four years, during which the subreddit's members pursued a number of ultimately fruitless leads, in September 2024 u/StefanMorse and u/IndigoRoom were able to trace the image to a 2006 photograph by Leandre Escorsell of Spanish model Leticia Sardá. The successful identification was one of several lost media mysteries solved in 2024, including the origins of the song "Ulterior Motives" and the original Backrooms image.

Origins and unsuccessful efforts to identify

On 27 January 2020, Finnish Reddit user u/TontsaH posted to the subreddit r/TipOfMyTongue, asking for help identifying a set of celebrities printed on curtains that they said they purchased from a local store in "maybe ... 2008". It had a total of eight faces on a repeating print; seven of them were quickly identified as Josh Holloway, Jessica Alba, Travis Fimmel, Ian Somerhalder, Orlando Bloom, and Adriana Lima (twice), but one of the faces, dubbed Celebrity Number Six, could not be identified. The source photos for the other six figures were also quickly tracked down, all having been taken between 2003 and 2007 – both Holloway and Somerhalder appeared on Lost, which was popular around the same time. But users struggled to pin down the missing face or its reference photo – even the gender of Celebrity Number Six was not agreed on by users, although female seemed more likely. TontsaH soon posted to 15 subreddits looking for an answer, and r/CelebrityNumberSix was created to continue the search.

r/CelebrityNumberSix participants could not agree on the depicted person's gender, with both Olivia Wilde (left) and Taylor Kitsch (right) suggested as answers.

Redditors approached the mystery from multiple avenues. Some prominent speculation focused on potential lookalikes who were also popular around the same time period, such as Olivia Wilde of House or Taylor Kitsch of Friday Night Lights, but matching photographs could not be found. Others attempted to track the photograph directly, with one Redditor reviewing all photographs on Getty Images between 1998 and 2007 that share a photographer with one of the known matches. Redditors found that the curtain came from the Finnish department store Anttila, appearing in its Summer 2009 catalog, and that it was supplied by Látky Mráz in the Czech Republic. However, Látky Mráz did not provide the designer's name. Other attempts, according to a summary post on Reddit, involved reverse image searching, reverse image searching of digitally modified images, advertising the search on other internet communities, using the Wayback Machine to get more information out of seller websites, and using Pinterest to try and generate similar images.

Identification as Leticia Sardá

2024 saw online sleuths solve several lost media mysteries, including the origins of the song "Ulterior Motives" and the original Backrooms image. Against this backdrop, Reddit user u/StefanMorse colored in the Celebrity Number Six image to resemble a photograph and ran it through PimEyes, a facial recognition tool. StefanMorse did not use any artificial intelligence in the editing process, saying it "doesn't help with shit and just slows down the search". PimEyes gave multiple results for Leticia Sardá, a Spanish model.

Sardá in 2024 holding up a print of the original photo

Sardá on the front cover of Tendencias Woman, Summer 2006

Another Reddit user, u/IndigoRoom, then contacted Leandre Escorsell, who had photographed Sardá for the cover of a 2006 Tendencias ('trends') insert in the Spanish magazine Woman, and asked if he recognized the photo. Escorsell said that he had taken the photo himself and expressed frustration that the image had been used on the print without his permission. On 8 September, IndigoRoom posted "Celebrity Number Six has been found" to r/CelebrityNumberSix, showing a copy of the photo provided by Escorsell.

When IndigoRoom posted to the subreddit's Discord server, several members suggested that the image was AI-generated or otherwise falsified, causing tension within the community. According to Angela Watercutter in Wired, the exact details of the dispute were murky, but it involved controversy with the moderators on both Reddit and Discord. However, on 9 September, Sardá confirmed that she was the woman in the photo, posting an image of herself holding a copy of it. A moderator who had been in connflict with IndigoRoom resigned on the same day, as other moderators spoke of receiving "disgusting messages and threats". Watercutter characterized the authenticity dispute, and similar speculation that "Ulterior Motives" had been AI-generated, as showing that "the internet is now even more untrustworthy than it used to be".

Sardá's reaction

"So many of these people have been looking for me for so long and taking effort to find me. It makes me happy in a certain way. It makes me worried also. I'm trying to give them what they were looking for because they made a lot of effort, you know, just to find a person on a fabric."

Sardá, as quoted in The New York Times

Sardá, born in 1980, had quit modeling in 2009 due to the illness of her grandmother and returned to her native Santa Cruz de Tenerife. As of her identification as Celebrity Number Six, she worked in hospitality. She told The New York Times that she had been contacted by a man asking to confirm that she was the woman in the Celebrity Number Six photo, which initially unnerved her as she had been unaware of the search; she said that after she asked who he was, "he tried to explain, but I didn't realize it was going to be so big". She found the image in an old portfolio of her work.

Sardá told Vanity Fair that she used Facebook to stay in touch with four friends and occasionally browsed Instagram, but was not active on Reddit and LinkedIn, where many people were contacting her. She received local attention as well, with some people on the street offering to manage her social media for her. She created accounts on a number of social media sites and expressed interest in making TikTok videos, saying that if going viral became an issue, "I can always hide."