That’s one where none of the main cast was of Middle Eastern descent (much less Persian/Iranian), and only two – Ben Kingsley (half-Indian) and Steve Toussaint (Black) – weren’t whites of European descent.
Maybe if they cast a Black actor as George III…
Do casting directors actually try to figure out an actor’s “ethnic background”? I thought they looked at headshots and other professional photos, the demo reel, etc. The résumé may have a bunch of physical details like height and weight and so on. If your skin colour is super pale, they will obviously know stuff like that.
One of my mom’s biggest complaints was that in the movie Madame Curie she was played by Greer Garson, who to put it bluntly was much prettier than the real Madame Curie.
Absolutely, if it’s part of the role. And lets face it, most of the examples given in this thread aren’t unknown actors playing minor roles. A casting director isn’t getting away with “Well I didn’t know Geoffrey Rush wasn’t Egyptian!”
I think I switched that movie off when it came on the TV, so I cannot really judge how well it all turned out…
Robert Downey Jr. was playing a white actor in the movie. The actor was in blackface. The overall role was written to show the absurdity of blackface. Absolutely nowhere in the same realm as Al Jolson singing “Mammie”. This isn’t blackface because the studio needed a name or blackface to demean blacks, it was a commentary on the stupidity of blackface and the vapidity of stereotypical actors. I have absolutely no problem with that role.
Excellent explanation.
This criticism becomes even funnier when the actor played by RDJ remains in blackface even when it is unnecessary or dangerous.
In the movie “Swingtime” (1936), Fred Astaire danced in blackface to the song “Bojangles of Harlem.” It was intended as a tribute to Bojangles, but is still very cringy. They could have had him do the number without blackface, or better still, hired a black dancer (like one of the Nicholas Brothers)
The movie “Holiday Inn” (1942) is worse. It has a blackface sequence featuring Bing Crosby that’s intended as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, but it’s full of painful stereotypes:
Judy Garland did blackface in the movie “Everybody Sing”:
There are no slaves in that film, and the Uncle Remus stories have nothing to do with the Lost cause CSA myth.
And nothing to do with the Confederacy.
Has there been any actual blackface in recent memory that did that? Yes, in the 1950s and even 1960s, casting white people for Chinese was pretty standard, and similar for native Americans- sorta.
Today, yes. Look at Resident Alien. But not so much 50 years ago.
Not to mention Bonnie and Clyde, with Faye Dunaway playing the rather plan Bonnie. This caused some confusion on the part of movie goers, asking why the hell Clyde wouldnt want to sleep with someone that gorgeous.
Hmm - serial offender or what? He also played Dr. Ahmed el Kabir in The Millionairess (with Sophia Loren). Now mostly remembered in this country for the awful related hit single, Goodness Gracious Me!, which was related to, but not included in, the movie. You just know I’m about tp link to it…
Top 5 UK hit single, no less. Kudos if you managed 30 seconds. And if you want to be really depressed, check out who produced it.
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My take on Peter Sellers in “Murder by Death” is that the film was pointing out how ridiculous it was for a Chinese character to be played by a white actor who spoke in broken English despite the character being a genius. That is, it was satirizing the racism of the Charlie Chan films.
Well, now that it’s no longer the Trump-Kennedy Center, sure.
There’s plenty of examples just given in this thread. But here’s a couple more I haven’t seen mentioned.
Johnny Depp as Tonto
Emma Stone as a part-Chinese, part-Hawaiian woman in Aloha.
Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in the recent Peter Pan remake
Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan. which is multiple layers wrong there
I know this one gets a lot of hate, but the original character was supposed to be of North Indian Sikh origin but was instead portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán which makes that original portrayal to be problematic. The hate for the later use of Cumberbatch is mostly a reaction to him not being the same ethnicity as Montalbán rather than the fact he isn’t Indian. In the end, there is nothing really in either portrayal that relates to their supposed ethnic origin, so the switch does not make me cringe for that reason.
//i\\
I knew immediately who you meant without reading further…
I had the unfortunate masochist urge to listen all of its three minutes in a perplexed state, and yes, it’s dreadful. But I’m sure if I’m thinking hard I could find similar things from German pop culture of that time, too.
Sellers had already cut his teeth voicing Indian-accented characters alongside Spike Milligan on The Goon Show.
That’s why I said multiple layers wrong. They could’ve hired an Indian actor to be true to the character. They could’ve hired a mexican actor to be true to the original actor. Instead they went and hired a pasty white guy.
Apparently their excuse was “we didn’t want to cast a person of color as a villian”
Or in 1966 they just could have called the character Simón Fidel Francisco de Peron y Juarez, called him “Pancho”, and saved us decades of trouble.
Kirk: PAAAAAAANCHOOOOO!!!
1979- Undefeated: Roman Gabriel. Roman Gabriel was half Filipino and half white. He played John Wayne’s adopted Cherokee son. He was better known for his previous career as a NFL quarterback.
This one slightly annoys me. She was playing a character based on someone Cameron Crowe met. The person he met was part Asian, had an Asian last name, talked a lot about her Asian heritage but looked like a blonde white woman. In other words she looked like Emma Stone. Having someone who looked Asian would defeat the purpose. Emma Stone wasn’t doing yellowface because she was playing someone who was supposed to look like her. She wasn’t made up to look Asian.