Celebrity Number Six (sometimes shortened to C6) is the name given to a face on a fabric print that was not recognized for many years. In 2020, a Reddit user named TontsaH posted a request on the subreddit r/TipOfMyTongue for help identifying eight faces on a set of curtains. Seven of the faces were quickly recognized as famous actors and models from the mid-2000s, but the sixth face, as numbered by TontsaH, remained unknown. This led to the creation of a new subreddit, r/CelebrityNumberSix, dedicated to solving the mystery.
Members of r/CelebrityNumberSix followed many unsuccessful clues for four years. They contacted the fabric’s supplier, reviewed photos from the past decade taken by the photographers of the other seven faces, and used tools to analyze and search for the image. In 2024, a Reddit user named StefanMorse suggested that Spanish model Leticia Sardá might be the person in the image by using a colored version of the print with a facial recognition tool called PimEyes. On September 8, another user, IndigoRoom, shared the original photo, taken by Leandre Escorsell in 2006. IndigoRoom had contacted Escorsell because he was known to have photographed Sardá. The next day, Sardá, who had stopped modeling in 2009, posted a picture of herself holding the image. She later sold copies of the image and began modeling again.
The identification of Celebrity Number Six was one of several "lost media" mysteries solved in 2024, including the origin of the song "Ulterior Motives" and the first Backrooms image. At first, some members of the subreddit debated whether IndigoRoom’s post was fake, created using artificial intelligence. Experts discussed how AI helped solve such mysteries but could also make future ones harder to solve due to realistic fake images.
Origins and unsuccessful efforts to identify
On January 27, 2020, a user named TontsaH from Finland posted a question on the subreddit r/TipOfMyTongue. They asked for help identifying celebrities shown on a set of curtains. The user explained that their grandmother had made the curtains using fabric bought from a local store around 2008. The curtains had eight repeated prints in black or blue. Seven of the faces were quickly recognized as Josh Holloway, Jessica Alba, Travis Fimmel, Ian Somerhalder, Orlando Bloom, and Adriana Lima (twice). However, one face, called Celebrity Number Six, could not be identified. The designs appeared to be created from photographs using software like Adobe Illustrator.
The source photos for the other six celebrities were found, and they were taken between 2003 and 2007. Both Holloway and Somerhalder were on the TV show Lost, which was popular during that time. Users could not find the missing face or its reference photo. Some users guessed Celebrity Number Six might be female, but there was no agreement on this. TontsaH later shared the question on 15 subreddits, and the subreddit r/CelebrityNumberSix was created to continue the search. Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Candice Lim from Slate described Celebrity Number Six as a "light" in the "dark place" of the Internet in the years that followed.
Reddit users tried many ways to solve the mystery, following hundreds of leads. Some guessed that Celebrity Number Six might look like Olivia Wilde from House or Taylor Kitsch from Friday Night Lights, but matching photos were not found. Others searched for the photo directly, including one user who checked all Getty Images photos from 1998 to 2007 taken by the same photographer as one of the known celebrities.
Users later discovered that the curtains came from the Finnish department store Anttila, which included them in its Summer 2009 catalog. The curtains were supplied by Látky Mráz in the Czech Republic, but the designer’s name was not provided. Other efforts included reverse image searches, searching for modified images, sharing the mystery on other online communities, using the Wayback Machine to find old website information, and letting Pinterest suggest similar images. Members of the community created spreadsheets to organize possible answers.
Identification as Leticia Sardá
As efforts continued to identify Celebrity Number Six, people repeated the process used to change the photographs into black and white and then tried to undo that process. A Reddit user named StefanMorse colored the Celebrity Number Six image to look like a photograph and used PimEyes, a tool that helps recognize faces. StefanMorse did not use artificial intelligence during the editing process, stating it "doesn't help with anything and just slows down the search." Out of the many results PimEyes provided, seven—more than any other name—were linked to Leticia Sardá, a Spanish model.
A Spanish user who sometimes posted on the subreddit IndigoRoom reached out to Leandre Escorsell, who had photographed Sardá for the cover of a 2006 Tendencias ("trends") section in the Spanish magazine Woman, and asked if he recognized the image. Escorsell confirmed he had taken the photo. He expressed frustration that the image had been used without his permission and surprise that someone had found the original, which had never been shared online. On 8 September, IndigoRoom posted "Celebrity Number Six has been found" to the subreddit r/CelebrityNumberSix, sharing a copy of the photo provided by Escorsell.
When IndigoRoom shared the image on the subreddit's Discord server, some members suggested the photo might be fake or created using artificial intelligence, causing disagreement among the community. According to Angela Watercutter in Wired, the details of the disagreement were unclear but involved conflicts with moderators on both Reddit and Discord. However, on 9 September, after being contacted through LinkedIn by a Croatian Redditor, Sardá confirmed she was the woman in the photo, posting a picture of herself holding a copy of it. Around the same time, a moderator who had argued with IndigoRoom resigned, as other moderators mentioned receiving "disgusting messages and threats."
IndigoRoom told El País that he was surprised to see the name of a Spanish model he had never heard of among the famous faces. Some people suggested Sardá might have been mistaken for Evangeline Lilly from the TV show Lost, as Candice Lim noted Sardá had previously modeled with Ian Somerhalder, also from Lost. Juan Claudio Mattosian wrote in Vanity Fair that the print designer might have simply liked the photo, but he also mentioned the designer remains unknown and likely will not reveal their identity due to the photo's unauthorized use.
Sardá's reaction
Many people have spent a long time searching for me, and their effort to find me makes me feel both happy and worried. I want to give them what they are looking for because they have worked hard to find someone connected to a piece of fabric.
Sardá, born in 1980, stopped modeling in 2009 after her grandmother became ill and returned to her hometown of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After being identified as Celebrity Number Six, she worked as a waitress at a café and lived a quiet life with her children, her small home, and her simple job, far different from her past as a model. A Redditor who first reached out to her asked, "Are you aware that about 50,000 people have been searching for you for five years?" Sardá told The New York Times that the question surprised her because she had not known about the search. She said the person tried to explain, but she did not understand how big the search would become. She found the image in an old collection of her work.
Sardá told Vanity Fair that she used Facebook to stay in touch with four friends and sometimes looked at Instagram, but she was not active on Reddit or LinkedIn, where many people contacted her. Locally, some people on the street offered to help her manage social media. She created accounts on several social media platforms and said she was interested in making TikTok videos, adding that if going viral became a problem, "I can always hide."
Sardá and Escorsell, when speaking to the media, praised the Redditors they met for being polite. On September 15, Sardá hosted an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") on r/CelebrityNumberSix, where she said, after adjusting to the surprise, she was "having fun" with her sudden fame and thanked the subreddit members for changing her life. The subreddit’s moderators started a GoFundMe to support Sardá. She sold prints of the original photo and began modeling for the Spanish fashion brand 7.rooms on Instagram.
Legacy
In 2024, internet users helped solve several long-lost media mysteries, such as the origins of the song "Ulterior Motives" and the original Backrooms image. After identifying "Celebrity Number Six," people from similar online groups began sharing their own mysteries on a forum for discussion. Kurt Luther, who leads a research group at Virginia Tech, said that these investigations might be solved because people with different skills often work together online. Journalist Caitlin Dewey noted that solving mysteries like "Celebrity Number Six" has become a popular activity on social media, similar to how some people enjoy solving puzzles. Lim suggested that this mystery was especially interesting to Reddit users because finding "Celebrity Number Six" could help the public remember a forgotten person, which many people can relate to.
Solving lost media mysteries now often uses tools like facial recognition and artificial intelligence. Luther explained that these solutions are possible today in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. Angela Watercutter discussed how debates about whether "Ulterior Motives" was created by AI show that the internet is becoming harder to trust. Jason Koebler of 404 Media said that identifying "Celebrity Number Six" as a specific person was a simple answer to a simple mystery, but he also noted that AI's ability to create realistic images could make future searches less clear. He explained that as AI improves, fake images might make it harder to know what is real.
Koebler also mentioned that traditional journalism played a role in finding "Celebrity Number Six," as the person was identified using both AI facial recognition and a photographer's memory. Emma Keates of The A.V. Club described mysteries like "Celebrity Number Six" as reminders of the early internet, but she predicted such mysteries might become rarer as society moves away from physical media and real-life experiences. She pointed to examples like AI-generated images in ads for the film Civil War and the documentary What Jennifer Did as signs of this change.