# Actors who played many nationalities **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 29, 2014, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080 "2014-01-29T23:21:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![john\_b\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@john\_b\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/john_b_2)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/81 "2014-02-03T11:29:25Z")
> [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](#): > > J. Carrol Naish was American of Irish descent, and didn’t ever play an Irish character. He played Native Americans, Chinese, and Hispanics, and one of his most famous roles was as Luigi Basco, an Italian immigrant on the radio and early TV sitcom “Life With Luigi”. Actually, J. Carrol Naish did play a few Irishmen–none too convincingly, sad to say :smack:–but he was overall an excellent actor, outstanding in Italian and Latino type roles. I’ve also seen him playing Arabs, Turks, East Indians and probably even Jews on occasion. Another actor from the same era, Akim Tamiroff, Russian by birth, played many Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks and Mexicans. Worthy of most honorable mention is general purpose British actor (of Czech descent, I believe), the late Herbert Lom, who was when I was growing up like a one man League Of Nations. He played mostly Europeans but would sometimes essay middle eastern toles. I’m not sure if he ever played far easterners but he probably played a South Asian a few times. In the films I remember seeing him in he was often cast in French or Cenral-Eastern European roles. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/82 "2014-02-03T12:53:43Z")
> [@john\_b\_2](#): > > Worthy of most honorable mention is general purpose British actor (of Czech descent, I believe), the late Herbert Lom, who was when I was growing up like a one man League Of Nations. He played mostly Europeans but would sometimes essay middle eastern toles. I’m not sure if he ever played far easterners but he probably played a South Asian a few times. In the films I remember seeing him in he was often cast in French or Central-Eastern European roles. Like Inspector Clouseau’s boss, Chief Dreyfuss. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/83 "2014-02-03T14:28:25Z")
> [@LawMonkey](#): > > Or–don’t forget!– **The Joker.** > > 😃 Heh. At that, Malachi Throne – who has a cooler name than you do, no matter what your name happens to be – played a master-of-disguise Batman villain before appearing in either of his recurring **Star Trek** roles after turning down the part of Doctor McCoy, stopping off to pick up a narrating credit on **Star Wars** along the way, and, man, _that_ guy was all over the place: he’s Israeli Foreign Minister Ben Yosef, he’s Deputy Premier Gregor Kamirov, he’s Gestapo Major Pruhst, he’s Hungarian Commisar Szigeti; he’s Van Helsing, he’s Machiavelli, he’s Ali Baba, he’s Blackbeard; he’s Hara Singh, he’s Sean Finnegan, he’s Joaquin Vallino, he’s Frank Czarnecki – and he’s even the inscrutable Shinera, if you ever need a doctor with a Fu Manchu moustache to look sinister while eating with chopsticks. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/84 "2014-02-03T22:23:41Z")
> [@TV\_time](#): > > Tony Randall - Although it should be pointed out he did most of the five to qualify in a single film. In The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, he hits four nationalities, Dr. Lao - Chinese, Merlin - English, Apollonius of Tyana - Roman, and an American, two mythological beings, Pan and Medusa and possibly two animals - a snake and a yeti. > > He also played a Belgian (Hercule Poirot) in The Alphabet Murders. > > and numerous Americans. Someone mentioned a day or two after I posted this that Randall also played a frenchman…I was thrown. I could not think of what it was. I asked if he wasn’t think of Poirot. He swore it was a Frenchman (sort of). He reached into my own library and pulled out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and opened it to the two conmen one of whom, the King of France was played by Tony Randall in the film in the '70s or '80s. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/85 "2014-02-04T00:07:06Z")
I’d like to add that Anthony Hopkins, who was an on-screen Othello with Bob Hoskins as Iago, and played Claudius to Nicol Williamson’s on-screen Hamlet – and if you don’t count that as Denmark cred, I’ll remind you he was Hrothgar in **Beowulf** – famously portrayed Adolf Hitler in **The Bunker** , and Richard in **The Lion In Winter** , and Richard _Nixon_ in **Nixon** , and Yitzhak Rabin in **Victory At Entebbe** , and everyone else from Pablo Picasso to New Zealand’s own Burt Munro, and Count Galeazzo Ciano in **Mussolini and I** , and Ptolemy in **Alexander** , and the oh-so-Welsh Ieuan Davies, and the so-Irish-he’s-fresh-out-of-the-IRA Angus Barrie, and he was Bruno Hauptmann in **The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case** – and of course he was a Norwegian Torvald Helmer in **A Doll’s House** , and a Russian Astrov in **Uncle Vanya** , and a French Quasimodo in **The Hunchback of Notre Dame** , and he’s played everyone else from Paul of Tarsus to Don Diego de la Vega to Abraham Van Helsing, and you could even argue he deserves a point for playing Odin. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/86 "2014-11-09T12:06:34Z")
Bumping because this one just jumped out at me: > [@Mrs.Cake](#): > > Omar Sharif is way up there as well. No time to do all the research right now, but a quick look at the characters on his IMDB page indicates: > Egyptian > Russian > Greek > Italian > German > French > Argentinian > Indian > Chinese (?) > Various flavors of Arab > American > > Probably a bunch more - guessing there is some Syrian & Turkish in there. …he was also the Mongolian Genghis Khan, the Lebanese Khalil Ghibran, the Armenian Sohamus, an Austrian archduke, a Spanish prince, and even Saint Peter, not to mention that _'Various Flavors Of Arab_ apparently covers Algerian and Moroccan and Saudi and Afghani and a dude from Nagorno-Karabakh. Plus also a Brazilian, if I’m reading IMDB right. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2014, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/87 "2014-11-09T12:34:21Z")
> [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](#): > > J. Carrol Naish was American of Irish descent, and didn’t ever play an Irish character. He played Native Americans, Chinese, and Hispanics, and one of his most famous roles was as Luigi Basco, an Italian immigrant on the radio and early TV sitcom “Life With Luigi”. He also played the Japanese Bad Guy, Dr. Daka, in the first **Batman** serial in 1943 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/88 "2016-01-16T15:23:28Z")
Wanted to bring the zombie thread back to life because Oscar ‘Llewyn Davis’ Isaac, who’ll be appearing as En Sabah Nur later this year, just won the Golden Globe for playing Polish-American mayor Nick Wasicsko – after he’d played Prince John in that ROBIN HOOD movie a little while back, and José Ramos-Horta before that; and, as per IMDB, he was Joseph, the father of Jesus; and Orestes, the Roman governor of Egypt; and Evgeni, a Russian security guard; and Laurent LeClaire, a Frenchman; and Colombian immigrant Abel Morales; and Mexican general Victoriano Ramírez. Solid start for a guy who (a) apparently just finished filming a historical drama set in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, and who (b) _is still in his mid-thirties,_ so he’s got all kinds of time for producers to keep tapping him for all sorts of roles. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/89 "2016-01-16T16:33:34Z")
Surprised no one has mentioned Ross Martin of _ **Wild, Wild West** _ fame. He could do any nationality, any accent. I’ll always remember him as “the Baron” in _ **The Great Race** _. Didn’t Heston play Richelieu in at least one of the _ **Three Musketeers** _ movies in the '70s? FTR, Sir Alec Guinness also played a Jedi in … need I say it? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/90 "2016-01-16T18:05:14Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > FTR, Sir Alec Guinness also played a Jedi in … need I say it? Well, now that you mention _that_… > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Come to think of it, José Ferrer won a Tony as Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway before he won an Oscar reprising the role on film – and he was the Turkish Bey in **Lawrence Of Arabia** , and the Polish Siletski in **To Be Or Not To Be** , and he played everyone else from Gopal Das to Josef Stalin to Manuel Benitez to Erich Rhinemann to George Pappas – and from a quick look at IMDB, it’s not like they shied away from having him play characters with the WASPiest names imaginable (Jeff Briggs? Stanley Royce? Lionel McCoy?) when he wasn’t playing Dominici or Papashvily or whoever. …Ferrer also played Shaddam Corrino IV (and how could we skip Barney Greenwald?) ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/91 "2016-01-16T20:07:21Z")
Also, **Noble Johnson** - an early African-American film actor who played whites, Native Americans (“She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”), Ukrainians, Egyptians (“The Mummy”), Africans (the chief of the native tribe in “King Kong”), Asians (Li-Po in “The Mysterious Fu Manchu”), Polynesians (Queequeg in “Moby Dick”), Latinos, you name it. As the early orthochromatic film stock did not capture skin color well, he would often play whites (sometimes in “whiteface” makeup, as in “The Most Dangerous Game”), particularly heavies as he had a large, powerful physique. He even played a demon in “Dante’s Inferno.” A close friend of Lon Chaney Sr. since childhood, he started his own movie studio in 1921 to produce films for the black film circuit that did not feature stereotypical roles. He died in 1978 at age 98, in Yucaipa, California. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/92 "2016-01-16T21:18:49Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > Also, **Noble Johnson** - an early African-American film actor who played whites, Native Americans (“She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”), Ukrainians, Egyptians (“The Mummy”), Africans (the chief of the native tribe in “King Kong”), Asians (Li-Po in “The Mysterious Fu Manchu”), Polynesians (Queequeg in “Moby Dick”), Latinos, you name it. …Sikh, Caribbean, Babylonian: dang, that’s a big IMDB listing. (And I guess it’s even bigger if we figure playing an Apache counts as a different nationality than playing a Lakota, and figure _that’s_ different from playing a Pueblo Indian, and so on for the Delaware Tribe and the Shawnee Tribe and the Ottawa Tribe…) ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/93 "2016-01-16T22:51:22Z")
And a note about Tony Shaloub…he also played a cab driver of undetermined nationality in _Quick Change_. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/94 "2016-01-16T23:21:47Z")
Hector Elizondo, half Basque, half Puerto Rican has played Mexican, French, Arab, Jewish, Russian, Aztec, a fictional nationaiity in \*The Princess Diaries \*movies, Italians, regular old non-descript guys with names like Arthur Willis and Joe Keenan. If you consider voice work he’s played aliens of several types, in \*Justice League \*and _Thundercats_ and Asians in \*The Last Airbender \*and _The Legend of Korra_, plus a vicuna in _Go, Diego! Go!._ ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2016, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/95 "2016-01-16T23:44:27Z")
No love for Christopher Lee? He played French, British, American, Portuguese, assorted aliens, Poles, German, Egyptian, Pakistani, Russian, Indian, Japanese, Arab, Italian / Roman, Chinese, assorted East Europeans (not just Transylvanian), South American, Greek, Persian, Iraqi, Spanish. And those are just the ones which are obvious from his IMDB page. So 20+. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/96 "2016-01-17T00:15:34Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > No love for Christopher Lee? Post #66. ---
**Author:** ![quiltguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e47774/32.png) [@quiltguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quiltguy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/97 "2016-01-17T12:58:28Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Nitpick: That was Siamese. If you please. ---
**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/98 "2016-01-17T14:05:17Z")
I always thought that James mason was a german…he was British, but seemed to play German officers in WWII films. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/99 "2016-01-17T19:31:56Z")
Mason was quite a convincing Scotsman in \*Journey to the Center of the Earth. \* ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080/100 "2016-01-17T20:28:17Z")
> [@Peanuthead](#): > > And I’ll add one more. He played an Eskimo in [The Savage Innocents.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053244/?ref_=nv_sr_1) And everybody jumped for joy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/actors-who-played-many-nationalities/680080.md?page=6)