Actors who played many nationalities

Nitpick: That was Siamese.

The latter being famously referenced by Bob Dylan as “Quinn the Eskimo.”

In addition to Jewish and Eskimo, we also have:

Cuban - The Old Man and the Sea (1990 TV movie)
Basque - The Passage
Hun -Attila
Portuguese - The World in His Arms
Chinese - China Sky
Ukrainian - The Shoes of the Fisherman
Mongol - Marco the Magnificent
Zakharstani (Afghan) - Caravans
Indonesian - East of Sumatra
Libyan - The Lion of the Desert

And an Indian ( hindu accent, at least ) in Frasier, where the latter sets his newspaper stall alight.

Personally, I always thought Lee Van Cleef, of Dutch parentage, had features which could be of any nationality; although I don’t know if he played many.
I vaguely remember him in some business thriller where he played a villainous farming co-op person.

Naveen Andrews of Lost seems to be the go-to guy to play any character from West Asia. (His actual nationality? British, born and raised. Or English specifically, I guess.)

Kinda sorta to the left of, but I can’t resist: Gina Bellman played someone playing a fairly decent number of different nationalities on Leverage. Her skin tone and facial features are such that she can kinda sorta pass for a variety of European descents with the right accent.

Peter Sellers

English - many films
French - Pink Panther series
Italian - After the Fox
Spanish - The Bobo
German - Dr. Strangelove
American - Dr. Strangelove, Being There, others
Chinese - Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, Murder By Death
Indian - The Millionairess, The Party
Austrian (?) - What’s New, Pussycat?
er…Ruritanian - The Prisoner of Zenda

and probably others…

Peter Sellers deserves a mention.

French (the “Pink Panther” series)
American (Dr. Strangelove)
Indian (The Party)
Ruritanian (The Prisoner of Zenda)
German (Dr. Strangelove)
Chinese (Murder By Death)
Fenwickian (The Mouse That Roared)
English (Dr. Strangelove)
ETA: Bugger.

ETA2: But Ellis forgot Fenwickian.

The TV version of Anthony Quinn/Yul Brynner as the go-to all-purpose Ethnic is Michael Ansara (and also in the movies)
By birth Syrian, he has played

Chinese (Terry and the Pirates)
Arabs (too many times to count)
American Indians (ditto)
Sikh (Smuggler’s Island)
Russian (the Diplomat)
Roman (Julius Cassar)
Babylonian (Belshazzar)
Jewish (The Robe)
Vietnamese (Soldier of Fortune)
Egyptian (Ten Commandments, and maybe Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy)
Hispanic (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Rawhide)
Somebody Fututristic (Outer Limits)
Klingon (Star Trek, more than once)
Other Alien (Lost in Space)
German (Cowboy in Africa)

If we’re including television, Mark Lenard has played a Vulcan, a Klingon, a Romulan, and a gorilla.

Peter Ustinov is probably up there somewhere.

What ethnicity was Barbara Eden supposed to represent in I Dream of Jeanie?:smiley:

Taleban! :eek:

Djinn

Which is really really jarring as he has a face which screams “Tamil”.

Well, since you asked, The Ottomans placed a premium on fair-skinned Circissian women. The long decline of the Empire was begun with the intrigues of an Ukranian woman Roxelana, and the Turks were jonesing for blondes so much that they raided Iceland

Conversely, although they castrated both white and Blacks, only African eunuchs were allowed to guard the women in the harem.

Michael Ansara, who I listed, was her husband, and guest starred twice on her series, once as a djinn, and once as a Hawaiian

She was from Baghdad, but from ancient times, so not Iraqi

Charlton Heston was El Cid in El Cid and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur and Togrul in Genghis Khan and Michelangelo Buonarroti in The Agony And The Ecstasy and Mike Vargas in Touch Of Evil, plus Sherlock Holmes in disguise as a Chinaman in The Crucifer Of Blood, which is pretty good for a guy who preferred to play Macbeth or Marc Antony but never turned down a paycheck as Josef Mengele or Cardinal Richelieu after making his on-screen debut as Peer Gynt.

He was a roman in The Seventh Sign.

It might surprise some that Marlon Brando had a wide variety of nationalities in his repertoire.