Yes, I knew that, but we are talking “nationalities” here. It was amazing the first time I heard him a speaking in his natural English accent.
Or the expiration of the Hays Code, including all of its absurd restrictions on showing interracial love. One common approach was to make non-Caucasian characters half-breeds, so they could plausibly be played by Caucasian actors with a little makeup (i.e. Jennifer Jones as a Eurasian in “Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing”, with the epicanthal folds drawn in by Makeup). My favorite example is Hedy Lamarr in “White Cargo”, as a character described in the novel simply as a Negress. It wouldn’t do to show white men nailing her in the film, so a line was added calling her “half Egyptian, half Arab”, whatever that is, even though it was still in the middle of the Congo. Those people were fair game for white men, apparently. But she still looked like a Jewish girl from Europe coated with black paint.
Hector Elizondo – currently playing Ed Alzate, of proud Basque heritage, over on LAST MAN STANDING – is all over this: he’s Giuseppe Benvenuto, he’s Hassan Salah, he’s Louis Renault; he’s Steinberg, he’s Ortega, he’s Kominsky, et cetera.
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.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK gave early roles to Alfred Molina and John Rhys-Davies as Satipo and Sallah, and, man, have they been busy ever since: the former as Ricardo Morales and Hercule Poirot and Arthur Conan Doyle and Sayed Mahmoody and Harvey Torriti and Panos Demeris when he wasn’t busy playing the all-American Doctor Octopus, and the latter as Stephanos Markoulis and Leonardo da Vinci and Jacques Duvalier and Gamal Nasser and Leonid Pushkin and Roger Singh in his free time from playing everyone from King Richard to Nakura.
Don’t forget Christopher Lee, who played Fu Manchu about as many times as he played Sherlock Holmes or Count Dracula: he’s Karaga Pasha, he’s Grigori Rasputin, he’s Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, he’s Mohammed Ali Jinnah, he’s Stefan Wyszynski, he’s Joaquin Morales; he’s Artemidorous, he’s Svenson, he’s Yusif, he’s Rochefort, he’s Samir, he’s Konstantin, he’s Ramses, and I’m not even counting Scaramanga.
Molina also played Tevye, a Russian Jew, on Broadway!
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.
He’s been Frankish, too. The Charlemagne of Metal \m/
Victor Mature of Demetrius And The Gladiators fame was especially valuable in big-screen westerns, since he could play Doc Holliday in one and turn around to play Chief Crazy Horse in another – and was just as useful if you were doing the same kind of movie but wanted the story of a local hit-and-run type in Afghanistan or India squaring off against the Brits in a gunfighters-on-horseback story. Or if you wanted him to play Carmine Ganucci, or the Pharoah Horemheb, or Oleg in The Tartars, or, y’know, Samson, in Samson And Delilah.
(And, hey: you know who else played Doc Holliday – before playing Crazy Knife, in The Plainsman? Henry Silva, who played Chunjin in The Manchurian Candidate. And he was Salvatore Giordano, and Ram Singh, and Garcia Mendez – and he was the Arab terrorist Rafeeq in Wrong Is Right, and he was the Venezuelan native Kua-Ko in Green Mansions, and as per IMDB he was always getting cast as guys named “Kruger” and “Gauss,” because, well, why the hell not?)
Very true.
So did we ever decide if it’s possible to come up with a “most nationalities” winner?
Paul Muni (original Scarface, The Good Earth) should at least get an honorable mention…I’m not sure how many he’s played since I haven’t seen all the films, but I’d guess at least a dozen. He did a film in 1929 called Seven Faces, playing quite a few ethnicities right there: Papa Chibou, Diablero, Willie Smith, Franz Schubert, Don Juan, Joe Gans, Napoleon.
I had assumed that this was no longer the case, but I just looked up the guy who played the Native American friend/potential love interest for the heroine of the Twilight movies (Taylor Lautner), and it sounds like he’s mostly white. According to Wikipedia he “has Austrian, English, German, Swiss-German, French, Irish, and Dutch heritage” with only “‘distant’ Native American ancestry”.
Looks like they did a decent job getting guys with at least some NA ancestry to play the werewolves. But really tribal identity is stronger than blood. The Red Sticks, who violently fought American encroachment and assimilation? Some of their leaders were <1/2 Creek, >1/2 Scottish, if not more. But it’s always fun to say you’re 1/17 Cherokee or some other impossible fraction if people ask. And your Native ancestor must always be someone famous. Pocahontas is a pretty good choice :dubious:
Maximilain Schell, the first native-German-speaking Oscar winner post-WWII, just died. I’d bet he played a few nationalities.
Anthony Quinn, who was the first one mentioned in the OP, has at least 24:
Previously mentioned:
- Arab - Lawrence of Arabia
- Mexican - Viva Zapata (and others)
- Greek - Zorba the Greek
- Italian - The Salamander (also La Strada and many others)
- Native American - They Died with Their Boots on (and many others)
- Spanish - Seven Cities of Gold
- North African - Road to Morocco
- Filipino - Back to Bataan
- French - Lust for Life (and The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
- American - The Happening
- Jewish - Barabbas
- Eskimo - The Savage Innocents
- 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
Also:
- South African - Target of an Assassin
- Hawaiian - Waikiki Wedding - Hawaiian
There are no doubt more that are not clear from the character names listed in IMDB. He would also have more if we listed individual Native American tribes he’s played.
Quinn is the one to beat. Yul Brynner is closest with 18.
He was human, or humanoid at least, of unknown ancestry, in an episode of Babylon 5, playing Elric the Technomage.
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”.
In his own right, Martin Landau deserves mention: in the '50s, he likewise pulled off the whole ‘play Doc Holliday, and then play an Apache Indian’ schtick, and in the '90s he played everyone from the Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi to the Sicilian-born Joe Bonanno to the Austrian-born Simon Wiesenthal – and in between he played Rufio in Cleopatra, and Caiaphas in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and otherwise showed up for work whenever they needed a French Marquis, or a certain Transylvanian Count, or anyone else from Mariano Montoya to Ivan Kuchenko.
But if we count the roles he played on Mission: Impossible, things get pretty weird pretty fast. He’s Martin Bormann, still in hiding after WWII! He’s Indus Jalpan, visiting from the Far East! He’s an Argentinian businessman! He’s a Caribbean dictator! He’s an Arab with Interpol! He’s Johnny-on-the-spot, for any value of ‘spot’!
Or–don’t forget!–The Joker.
