The China Mail - Instant classic: Trump mug shot joins star-studded rogues' gallery

The former president, wearing his usual red tie and business suit, was photographed under harsh lighting against a dull gray background with a watermark of the local sheriff's badge.

Trump had avoided the indignity of a mug shot during his three previous arrests this year, but this time officials in Georgia insisted that standard procedure must be followed.

Thursday's picture could be the most famous booking photo in history -- it is a first for a former US president -- and it immediately became a defining image for both his supporters and critics.

Mug shots often mark a moment of public humiliation, but Trump embraced the image, reposting it on his social media platform with a link to his campaign website.

It showed him with a furrowed brow under his distinctive locks that were officially described in Fulton County Jail documents as "Blond or Strawberry" color.

Here are some other well-known personalities whose reputations will always be accompanied by a badly-lit police photograph.

- OJ Simpson -

The glove! The slow-roll Fordo Bronco police chase! And of course, the mug shot.

Few criminal cases have captured the public imagination the way the murder trial of OJ Simpson did.

Simpson's half grin, captured for eternity when Los Angeles Police arrested him on suspicion of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, was on the cover of Time magazine a week later, and now adorns everything from T-shirts to custom-made electric guitars.

- Hugh Grant -

The "what on earth possessed me?" is plain to see in the hunched shoulders and sheepish look that Hugh Grant struck when the LAPD arrested him for his encounter with a sex worker on Sunset Strip.

He was on his way to Hollywood stardom and was dating Liz Hurley, for goodness' sake.

-Tiger Woods -

With a puffy face, heavily bagged eyes and several days' worth of stubble, golfing legend Tiger Woods did not look good when he was arrested in California in 2017 for driving under the influence.

The former world number one -- and possibly the greatest golfer ever -- says his appearance was the result of powerful prescription painkillers.

- Nick Nolte -

When actor Nick Nolte was booked for reckless driving in Malibu 2002, he looked like he'd been sleeping under a hedge.

The lank, greasy hair, vacant look and air of general neglect were a far cry from where he'd been 10 years earlier -- People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive."

- James Brown -

Soul singer James Brown was looking every inch the wild man when he was arrested in South Carolina in 2004 on suspicion of domestic violence.

He looked a little better in the updated picture Aiken County Sheriff released the following day, perhaps after someone had lent him a comb.

- Paris Hilton -

The heiress and reality TV star cuts a knowing dash in the photo handed out by police in Las Vegas after they arrested her in 2010 for cocaine possession.

The uber wealthy socialite appears untroubled by the trouble she is in, which resulted in a year's probation and some community service.

- Jane Fonda -

Actress and activist Jane Fonda used her 1970 mugshot -- taken on her arrest for (subsequently dropped) charges of assaulting a police officer -- to strike a defiant pose, her fist raised in the same protest she had waged against the Vietnam War.

She continues to sell sweatshirts, t-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with the picture on her website.

- Jeremy Meeks (aka 'The Hot Felon')-

Sometimes, the mugshot works out pretty well for the sitter.

Jeremy Meeks, a convicted felon and former gang member, parlayed his steamy 2014 booking picture -- those eyes! -- into a modelling career, and is now regularly seen stepping out with equally beautiful women.

- John Edwards -

Trump is now the first former US president whose photo lives in police files, but not the first politician.

John Edwards, whose 2008 effort to become the Democratic Party nominee for the White House foundered, was arrested in 2011 over charges he misused campaign funds to hide the existence of a mistress and child. He was later cleared.

B.Carter--ThChM