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TAKE a look at these pictures.
The one on the far right shows Hollywood A-list actress Nicole Kidman standing beside Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar.
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The other shows her in the same pose with Singapore hairstylist Jonal Chong.
Both look almost identical. In both pictures, the Australian actress is wearing the same black tube dress lined with vertical silver stripes. Amenabar and Mr Chong appear to share the same get-up of a black jacket over a blue shirt.
An online search reveals that two websites, namely bbc.co.uk and Hollywood.com, have the same Amenabar/Kidman shot.
Further checks show that it was taken on Aug 7, 2001, outside the Directors' Guild of America's screening auditorium in Los Angeles. The auditorium was screening the premiere of Amenabar's acclaimed psychological horror film, The Others, which starred Kidman as a mother who lived in a house with two children.
There are also other shots of Kidman and Amenabar at the same event posted online.
my paper met Mr Chong yesterday afternoon at his salon, Jonal Chong Hair Couture, in Orchard Central.
When asked about his picture with Kidman, Mr Chong, 48, said in Mandarin: "The picture was taken in 2002 at the premiere of Birth in London." Birth was a 2004 film directed by British director Jonathan Glazer and starred Kidman as a widow who was convinced that her dead husband had been reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy.
Asked to explain the similarity between the two premiere photographs, he said: "I don't know... I can't explain it. I don't know why Nicole's head is facing the same direction. I don't know why the background looks similar."
When pressed further to offer a possible explanation for the striking resemblance between the photographs, he said that "it's wrong to cut and paste" and repeatedly muttered: "Who would want to smear my reputation?"
Asked if he has other pictures of himself and Kidman, he said: "I have many but I left them in London." He said he has a hair salon in London.
He said this is the only photo of him and Kidman which he brought home from London because "it showed me attending my first movie premiere with Nicole", he explained.
Mr Chong's business name card (above) also features the same Kidman photograph. It is printed with a handwritten message that says: "To Jonal Chong, Hair Couture, all the best, Nicole Kidman." The same message was also printed on a large poster of Kidman which was hanging in the salon yesterday.
He added that he would have gone to Los Angeles to style her hair for the Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Jan 16, if not for the amount of business he has to handle for the upcoming Chinese New Year.
Mr Chong, who is also the managing director of his salon, was interviewed previously by my paper.
In an August 2009 article, he said he had been based in London for seven years and was Kidman's hairstylist from 2000 to 2005. He also said he styled hair for American actress Katherine Heigl and British actor Hugh Grant.
In the article, he also said that British actor Ewan McGregor contacted him to style his hair for Moulin Rouge's London premiere. It was there that Kidman reportedly hired him on the spot.
He told my paper yesterday that he took a five-day advanced course at Vidal Sassoon School in October in 1985. He returned to Singapore in 2005 for family matters. He also added that he continued to style Kidman's hair from 2006 to 2008 on an ad-hoc basis.
An online search shows that over the past decade, Mr Chong was a director in a pawn shop, Kwong Hin Pawn Shop.
He is also a director in three businesses, namely Jonal Chong Hair Couture, Jonal Chong International and Savoir Fair.
He was also featured prominently in a series of print advertisements for his salon last month and on Sunday.
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congrats 
