Mike Myers is obsessed with painting KFC icon Colonel Sanders.
The ‘Austin Powers’ actor has always been fascinated with the mascot and viewed the fast food as "exotic" when he was younger, and now finds himself sketching likenesses of the famous face on a regular basis.
He admitted: "I make about a painting a week. I started painting about two and a half, three years ago.
"My first painting was of my wife, Kelly. My second one was of my dog, George Harrison. And then I got into this Colonel Sanders thing.
"Growing up in Canada, looking south at America, they are so amazing at creating identity that they even have enough leftover to come up with the colonel who is the colonel of chicken!
"Our whole family was obsessed with the Colonel. For me show business was buying Kentucky Fried Chicken. Because it was nationally advertised, and it seemed exotic. First of all, it’s a great character.
"He has his own unique silhouette–you can draw him in three lines. On the day that Lucian Freud died, I painted my version of a Freud with the Colonel, naked, holding a palette, painting himself. Then I did the Colonel with the Pearl Earring. Then I did the Colonel Lisa. You know, which is the Mona Lisa with the Colonel. This is so just a hobby. It is just making stuff. That’s all I want to do, is just make stuff.
"[Do I still paint him?] Oh yeah. Yeah, I do. It’s just a fun constant."
The 50-year-old actor – who has son Spike, two, and daughter Sunday, six weeks, with wife Kelly – also enjoys making music at home on his computer.
He added in an interview with America’s GQ magazine: "I also make GarageBand tunes. I make one a day. I have now for eight years. They usually end up sounding like the Pet Shop Boys. And the Lightning Seeds, and a bit like Joy Division, and it can sound like Kraftwerk. I made one this morning. I called it ‘Just Let Me Have My Steel-Belted Radials’."
Mike Myers’ fast food paintings
