Reddit Mystery 'Celebrity Number Six' Solved After Six Years

If you were one of the internet sleuths who got caught up in identifying "Celebrity Number Six" during the pandemic, you can sleep a bit easier now.

It all started in Jan. 2020 when Reddit user u/TontsaH asked the kind investigators of /r/TipOfMyTongue to identify the sixth celebrity on a curtain set he purchased over a decade prior. While the subreddit is normally good at pinpointing everything from old video games to songs, the mysterious face stumped them. The curious user had been posting on various celebrity-centric and movie-centric subreddits to identify the other stars since 2018.

The curtain set had Lost stars Josh Holloway and Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Alba, actor and model Travis Fimmel, Orlando Bloom, and two photos of Adriana Lima. The remaining face was still a mystery, and /r/CelebrityNumberSix was born.

The quest began to consume users. The store it was purchased from was found, as were all the source images for the identified celebrities. People began combing through Getty Images and attempted to match up the image with lookalikes, such as models Jayne Windsor and Filippa Hamilton.

User u/StefanMorse took a different approach and colored in the two-tone photo before running it through a facial recognition tool. Spanish model Leticia Sardá came up as a possible match.

Fellow sleuth u/IndigoRoom contacted photographer Leandre Escorsell, who photographed Sardá for a magazine cover. Escorsell confirmed her identity, sent the original photo he took, and expressed frustration that his image was reproduced onto this curtain without his consent.

Getting the confirmation needed, the identity of Celebrity Number Six was announced on Sept. 8.

The confirmation felt too good to be true, and accusations from moderators of u/IndigoRoom using AI muddied the years-long mystery. Sardá herself revealed she was oblivious to tens of thousands of people searching for her identity, but the memories still flooded back to her when she pulled the image from her archives.

In an interview with the New York Times, Sardá also revealed she's been enjoying a quiet life post-modeling.

"I quit in 2009, and when I quit I really quit," she said. "My grandma got sick. I came here to support her, which was supposed to last for two months. Then it was longer. Then I fell in love and had children. I never went back. It’s my alter ego, you know?"

She also expressed unease with the revitalized attention. When asked what worries her, she replied, "How far this could go. How this is going to change my life."

The former model also did an AMA to share her thoughts, revealing that she now works as a barista in a bank. "I work at a bar in a building full of bankers and suddenly everyone knows and I've been making them coffee," she explains.

Now, it appears that Sardá is easing back into modeling. On her new Instagram account, she's seen modeling for Spanish brand 7.ROOMS. Some generous users also set up a GoFundMe for her, which currently sits at over 2,000 Euros at the time of publishing.

"Thanks a lot guys," she shared on the subreddit. "U changed my life."