10 Ethnically-Challenged Casting Choices of Hollywood - Neatorama

With all the money in Hollwood, you'd think that they can come up with better casting choices, especially when it comes to ethnic roles.

Take for instance, Swedish actor Warner Oland, who was hired to play Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu in the 1930s (he did it in "yellowface"). That may be norm back then, when Hollywood didn't want to hire authentic Asian actors, but what about now?

Cineleet blog has an interesting post about 10 bizarre ethnically-challenged casting choices: Link

They left off one of my favorites - the Dr. Who episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," which co-starred British actor John Bennett as a Chinese villain, complete with bad makeup, bad (ls instead of rs) accent, opium smoking, and a secret lair (where else) in a Chinese laundromat. The ironic thing is that it's such a spectacular story!

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It's fitting that Breakfast of Tiffany's is number one, that is the ultimate example. Another example is Henry Silva playing a North Korean in the classic "Manchurian Candidate," a total laugher.

Recently, I question the choice of Angelina Jolie as Marianne in "A Mighty Heart."

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I guess it maybe because there aren't many ethnic casting choices out there. That and the ones that are available either cater to a stereotypical role or to one that obviously isn't a strong role (i.e. background character).

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What about Jennifer Lopez playing an Italian in The Wedding Planner complete with thick Boricua/Bronx accent?

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Italians can't be from the Bronx?

In a related story, who's Jennifer Lopez?

The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite movies, but Pete Postlethwaite did confuse the heck out of me. Can't lie.

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What about any American actor attempting to play Irish? (Actual Irish, that is. You know, someone *from* Ireland?)

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John Wayne as an Asian was the most bizarre ever.

Ben Kingsley can play anyone convincingly. Now THERE's an actor!

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Has anyone ever heard of a movie called White Girls, the plot of which is centered around two African-Americans spending the entire movie in whiteface?

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I've never heard of it, but now I'm going to look into it.

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in the movie "21", most of the characters should have been Asian.

And in the movie "A mighty heart" Angelina Jolie played Daniel Pearl's widow, who is a black woman

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Mickey Rooney always makes me cringe whenever I watch BaT. Good choice for number one.

I thought Angelina Jolie was amazing as Marianne Pearl. What made it so much more meaningful, to me, was that Marianne is good friends with Angelina and Brad and specifically asked Angie to play her and Brad to direct.

Damn, that movie was good.

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I used to wonder about this when I was a kid ('40s and '50s). Sabu was real, wasn't he?

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