Had Lloyd Blankfein not decided to become the chief executive of one of the world’s most powerful and loathed financial institutions, he might’ve been an actor. Not only is he good at delivering powerful monologues, as we saw at yesterday’s Senate hearing, but he has such an expressive face: a rubbery visage able to register an astonishingly wide array of emotions — anger, confusion, joy, horror, despair, contempt — instantly and seemingly effortlessly. “He is an excellent witness to photograph because his emotions come out of his face,” says Chip Somodevilla, a photographer for Getty Images who took many shots of Blankfein yesterday. “I’ve been working in Washington and photographing people for 10 years, and he is one of the best. He gestures a lot, he has a lot of expressions. He can become very animated and excited when he’s talking about something that he likes. And he’s got this thing where he kind of squints his right eyes and cocks his left eyebrow. Like he can’t believe you asked that question, but he’s really listening so he can answer it. He’s a very animated guy.” To celebrate this underappreciated talent, our photo editor Jed has compiled a number of his expressions yesterday into an animated GIF, after the jump. Lloyd: May he never get Botox.
