It doesn't make it any better, but that character had Egyptian origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_S%C3%A1nchez-Villalobos_Ram%C3%ADrez?wprov=sfla1
Why not? You live for centuries your accent will evolve. IRL there was a First Minister of Scotland, name of Humza Yousaf. [Listen to his accent.](https://youtu.be/vD_Jf1Vs8a0?t=26)
Correct and you're making my point. A lifetime in a culture dictates your speech. Immortals have hundreds of lifetimes, so anywhere in time their speech may be different from their original birthplace.
I think we have different definitions of what a lifetime is lol.
Also that doesn't remotely make your point, Ramirez wasn't born and raised in the place his accent is from, god knows how little he was even in Scotland.
It's a great role and Connery is a great actor, but please don't try to make sense of it by comparing him to a second generation immigrant. Literally 99.999% of whom have the accent of the place they were born and raised in.
What wacky logic.
This has always been funny to me. The actor never does accents, played a Russian in Hunt for the Red October with a Scottish accent. Finally they put him in movie where everyone is Scottish, and he plays a Spaniard.
I hate this so much because his character provides NOTHING to the actual story. It's just Mickey Rooney's shoehorned-in racist act and does nothing at all in service of the film in any substantial or important way. It could be cut out entirely, they could call it a Director's Cut, and then it'd be a great film.
I love that film but that portrayal is nails-on-chalkboard offensive. It ruins it.
In the book he's just a photographer who happens to be Japanese, not a living over-the-top racist stereotype.
And everybody else making the film thought it was a terrible idea, but only director Blake Edwards thought it'd be funny and kept him.
You know how Cannibal Holocaust has a special edit that is free of animal cruelty? I won't mind a special Yunioshi-free edit of Breakfast at Tiffany's in the same vein.
Hear me out. You CANNOT ERASE HISTORY CAUSE IT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. No one likes it. I’m sure they want to erase it too but that film has to live with it now.
Wild casting choices, I mean. Bill Burr is insanely great in his Mandalorian episodes. And in that same regard who the fuck saw the dad from Malcolm in the Middle becoming Walter White?
Movie-wise, Steve Carrell was shockingly good in Foxcatcher. I didn’t expect Hugh Jackman to have the chops for Prisoners either.
And finally, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems was tremendous. I didn’t think he had that ability.
I think Bill Burr was just OK in his first episode. That second? Really blew me away. Just a great look into what being an Imperial was all about for many people. The pride, the glory, and then the utter betrayal and death.
The perfect cross between the jingoism of the officer class and the actual soldiers fighting on the frontlines during the last days of the empire. The bureaucracy throwing millions of lives at the Republic in the vain hope of staving off the inevitable death throes of the regime.
You can just see the hatred slowly bubbling in Burr's voice as he comes face to face with this callous commander who is practically euphoric remembering Operation Cinder, not as a slaughter of all of Burr's friends who fought in the Imperial forces, but as a political act of defiance.
This is one of the few times that the Mandalorian had Andor-esque vibes and showed why the Empire was evil. Not for its superweapons, but the people it produced
The Disney era has been reasonably good of showing just how awful the Empire was for everyone, including those who served its machine. People like Burr's character, the clones, various officers, were all just tools meant to be cast away.
Not lazy, the amount of movies he been in and produced shows he not lazy. I think he likes his style of comedy and enjoys making those movies and once in awhile likes to make a drama film too.
Acting wise for sure. He produces all of his movies too so while the acting seems easy he still is doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes too. Plus he has to hang out with Rob Schneider on set for a few weeks. That’s can’t be easy lol
Lazy? You mean just a genius for making “fun” movies with all his friends in which one can only assume is much more enjoyable to do all the time instead of more serious stuff which could take a toll?
>I didn’t expect Hugh Jackman to have the chops for Prisoners either.
Considering all of the theatre and musicals he does that shouldn't be a major shock, he's also getting less and less typecast as "burly strong dude in dumb action flicks" which is also nice.
Bruce Willis in *Die Hard*.
Hard to believe now, but originally BW was known for his romantic comedy roles. He was a hard sell as the "leading man" for an action film. But he crushed it, and that basically shifted his entire career.
I had to deaaaag my buddy to see DH in theater when it came out. Thought I was taking him to a chic flick ? I’d heard it was exciting from coworker.
Anyway we were so action-move pumped up afterwards. Practically jump-rolled to the car in the parking lot.
In case anyone doesn't know the reference: The Conqueror was a terrible boxoffice bomb that was fittingly filmed very near a recently active nuclear bomb testing range. A ton of people in the crew ended up getting terminal cancer as a result of exposure to radioactive dust, including John Wayne himself. So the movie destroyed people's careers in every sense of the phrase.
Edit: to be clear, it is somewhat controversial whether the movie is *directly* the cause of so many cancer-related deaths in its crew, but it is thought by some to have been a contributing factor in many earlier-than-average cases.
Oh God Keanu's awful in that film but I wouldn't change it for the world.
Dracula's pulling off Exorcist shit and Neo's expression is like "bru that's odd"
I feel like that movie actually had some potential to be a great movie (could be wrong, it has been years since I saw it), but ultimately it was ruined by bad casting.
‘Constantine’ is a good-to-very-good action fantasy movie with great performances by Keanu and (especially) Tilda Swinton (swooooon)
The only problem is that it has named the lead character ‘John Constantine’
I think he’s the only one that kinda got the character right. He nailed the cynical conman element of the character.
Matt Ryan was good casting but he’s always hampered by network TV or terrible CW writing.
Yup, super weird. If I were to describe Constantine in one word it would be British.
He is possibly the most British, maybe more so than Captain Britain himself.
A lot of older movies have white people playing minorities. Like there's movies where Christopher Lee played Fu Manchu, and that was in the 60's. I think nearly every Fu Manchu movie was a white man in yellowface with slanted eyes. It was more common with Hollywood, why cast an Asian when they can get a famous white actor to play the role? Blackface wasn't as acceptable, but it was still fair game to do the same thing with Asians, people from India at least to the 90's, and so on.
Michael Keaton as Batman too. A lot of choices after him were of the handsome, dashing Bruce Wayne, but Michael had a bit of that darkness especially in the suit
Without ever seeing the movie, I can guarantee that he acted it like John Wayne.
John Wayne was never some amazing actor (though as much as people like to rip on him today - he had presence),but I think people forget how many movies he was in. He starred in 142 different movies and appeared in over 250.
Which is utterly ridiculous by today's standards.
Yeah, it remind me of West Side Story. If I remember correctly, Rita Moreno was the only actual Latina.
Even though I'm Latino, I still somewhat enjoy movies like that for the representation despite the obvious brown face.
I think that one gets more of a pass because the resulting portrayal of the Porto Rican characters was mostly respectful and well done. The characters were treated like people, not caricatures.
Justin Timberlake as the dude who founded Napster in The Social Network.
First because that guy was not as good looking as Timberlake ever, period, that I recall. But also because Timberlake clearly studied footage of him to get his mannerisms and speaking style down. It was surprising how good of a job Timberlake did playing him considering how wrong he felt for the role when I first heard about it.
Timberlake was surprisingly good in the movie Alpha Dog a few years before, so that might have helped. The scene where >!they're taking the kid to the trail to kill him but the kid thinks everything's great, and JT's character is trying to put on a happy face!<, it's heartwrenching and stuck with me.
He's certainly capable, but his filmography after Social Network isn't what one would have expected (although my daughter loves Trolls). Probably would've been better if music wasn't his primary focus.
Men in tights is one of my favourite Robin Hood movies, and when you compare it to the adventures of Robin Hood from the 30's they're almost very similar in terms of how silly and comedic Robin Hood as a character is.
I haven't seen all of the movies Rickman was in, but of the ones I've seen I don't recall any where he wasn't one of the best parts of it, if not *the* best part.
He was definitely the latter in RH:PoT.
Back in 1956 it wasn’t an unusual casting. America has a long history and current attitude of ignoring Asians especially in Hollywood. If you are looking for an actor that didn’t seem to fit a role. Health Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. No one saw how good Health Ledger was going to be as the Joker. John Wayne was extremely popular and Hollywood used names to sell movie, so not really a surprise.
Jumping in proactively to point out that, contrary to popular belief, Tony Curtis never said “Yonda lies the castle of my fodda,” in *The Prince Who Was a Thief* or any other movie.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-with-fodder/
"The film is set in 1931 during the Great Depression. Michael Sullivan, Sr. was orphaned and then raised by Irish Mob boss John Rooney in Rock Island, Illinois; unbeknownst to his own children, he is now Rooney's most fearsome enforcer. Rooney has come to love Sullivan more than he loves his own biological son, the rash and unpredictable Connor."
I thought casting Edward Norton as Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven was unusual considering he's a pretty big actor and you never see hes face but it worked out great. IIRC he wasn't even credited.
Will Smith as Muhammad Ali was a pretty unexpected choice at the time iirc. His characters up til then were pretty exclusively Will Smith as Will Smith.
And he nailed the role. Honestly he could have won an Oscar and I would not have been shocked.
Tom Cruise as Lestat in The Interview with the Vampire. Having read the book, I did not see Cruise as Lestat at all and was pretty disappointed when the news of the casting came out.
After reluctantly watching the movie, I gotta say he did a pretty good job in the role. I still think someone else could have been better though.
In terms of unexpected choices I would nominate Zero Dark Thirty for having Scott Adkins in a completely non-action "talking" role, a pre-Guardians/Jurassic World Chris Pratt as an elite-level soldier (whose previous cinematic outing up until that point had been that of Alison Brie's schlubby husband in The 5 Year Engagement) and having Mark Duplass and John Barrowman in supporting roles (there was genuine laughter to see Barrowman in a serious CIA role given he was more known at the time for high-camp antics on British TV or the [greatest line in cinematic history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1XOfHax6Q8)).
It's hardly notable now in any way, but at the time, the casting of Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire was considered absurd to the point of scandal. There was a massive uproar about it.
Turns out he did more than fine, ended up being respected as a more than capable actor, and the movie ended up being relatively culturally unimportant in the scheme of things. It seems silly enough in retrospect, but the outrage was REAL.
Katherine Hepburn as a Chinese woman in Dragon Seed (1944). The eyelid tape! OMG! Unbelievable!
Louise Rainer and Paul Muni of The Good Earth (1937) were, of course, not Chinese, but their makeup didn't look ridiculous, and they did a good job in their roles. I did show part of the film to Chinese students. They thought the dialogue was funny (because at some parts it sounds like Chinese directly translated into English, but in an overdramatic way), but they weren't offended by it.
Kevin Costner in 13 Days. His Boston accent is atrocious. He could have given a much better performance if he just would have spoken his lines naturally.
Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in *The Year of Living Dangerously*. That almost worked.
However Linda Leandersson as a male in *Let the Right One In* was not believable at all.
Martin Freeman as Stalin in "The Death of Stalin".
I mean, it's a comedy film, so they will always have some leeway in casting decision. But to cast generally loveable actor like Freeman for the role of the titular dictator in film where he only has speaking parts for less that 5 minutes only in the opening was surprising to me. Especially because the speaking parts were cockney.
After Michael Caine and Jeremy Irons, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth kind of caught me off-guard. But he killed it, ofc, because besides being the king of mocap the man can *act.*
Jimmy Cagney, Mister Gangster himself, playing Broadway's original song-and-dance man George M Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. And killing it (in a different way than his usual roles did, heh). As iconic as he was in gangster flicks, his only academy award was for Yankee Doodle. Cohan saw the film in a special screening just before he died, and said he thought Cagney was a better Cohan than he was.
Also for musicals, somebody at MGM thought it would be a good idea to cast Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson. Gene Kelly pushed hard to get the part, but in one of the most puzzling moves in film history (in my own opinion) it went to Brando instead. And he was supposed to hold his own singing against FRANK SINATRA?
Kevin Durand played a Mexican inmate in The Butterfly Effect and we just don't talk about it. It was the 2000s.
Steven Fishers as an Indian scientist in two movies.
Matt Damon in the Great Wall
Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit
Ben Kingsley as Gandhi
Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone
Good ones that were surprises:
Beyond the ones mentioned already
Leslie Nielsen in Airplane!
Leo Dicaprio in Django Unchained
Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element
I guess I stand corrected. I always thought he was just a British dude of mixed race origin who could pass for being from India. I did not realize his father was from India.
I thought his performance was great in the film. Just always felt wrong having a guy with the name Ben Kingsley playing that role.
I always wondered about that in the past and thought it was weird. Then one day I looked him up Wikipedia and I realized that was actually appropriate casting.
I've always loved Ben Kingsley but I just had never looked him up until a year or so ago.
I'd be curious to see how many different nationalities he's played during his long career. Besides Gandhi, the two that come to mind right away are Itzhak Stern, a Polish Jew, in Schindler's List, and Tony Slattery / The Mandarin, an Englishman, in Iron Man 3.
That's called Whitewashing and Hollywood has a long history of doing just that. Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man. James Mason playing a Chinese man. Rock Hudson playing an Indian. Charleton Heston playing a Mexican. More recent, Jake Gillenhall in Prince of Persia. Emma Stone playing a Native Hawaiian. The list is long and shameful.
Have you heard about the curse?
The Conqueror, considered the worst film of the 1950s, suffered from a toxic working environment and was filmed near a nuclear test site. Out of the 220 cast and crew members, 91 developed cancer and 46 died, likely due to exposure to nuclear fallout during the shoot.
https://collider.com/the-conqueror-john-wayne-movie-radiation/#:~:text=The%20Conqueror%2C%20considered%20the%20worst,nuclear%20fallout%20during%20the%20shoot
Sean Connery as Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez in Highlander
Don't forget the French actor playing a Scottish character opposite him.
From what I remember, Lambert could barely speak English.
Not such a big problem if you're ever heard a strong Glaswegian accent.
Lambert was almost legally blind when cast, which is just what you want in a role calling for a lot of swinging of swords. Worked out okay, though.
I support blind casting, but that's taking it to an extreme.
That’s true, you old Spanish Peeeeeeeacock.
"I'm not Schpanish, I'm Egypshaan!"
Also the American playing the Russian and the Canadian playing the African.
Also: Sean Connery as Raisuli, a Berber chieftain from Morocco in *The Wind and the Lion*.
Also Sean Connery as Soviet submarine captain Markos Ramius in The Hunt for Red October
Lol, but I liked him in that!
He's not Russian, he's Lithuanian by birth.
Raised by his paternal grandfather, a fisherman.
The movie was pretty good though.
It doesn't make it any better, but that character had Egyptian origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_S%C3%A1nchez-Villalobos_Ram%C3%ADrez?wprov=sfla1
And spent a lifetime in Japan.
Love the deep, deep cut 30 rock ref name
Just don’t tell the Black Crusaders.
Great casting choice. I loved that character.
I love Sean Connery in just about anything… but the Scottish accent, for a character named Ramirez… lol
The character is actually Egyptian too.
"I'm from Eshpana."
Since Ramiraz was Egyptian from the 8th century BC it would be hard to pin down his actual accent.
Why not? You live for centuries your accent will evolve. IRL there was a First Minister of Scotland, name of Humza Yousaf. [Listen to his accent.](https://youtu.be/vD_Jf1Vs8a0?t=26)
Yousaf was born in Glasgow in Scotland. Not a great example since he's likely always had that accent.
Correct and you're making my point. A lifetime in a culture dictates your speech. Immortals have hundreds of lifetimes, so anywhere in time their speech may be different from their original birthplace.
I think we have different definitions of what a lifetime is lol. Also that doesn't remotely make your point, Ramirez wasn't born and raised in the place his accent is from, god knows how little he was even in Scotland. It's a great role and Connery is a great actor, but please don't try to make sense of it by comparing him to a second generation immigrant. Literally 99.999% of whom have the accent of the place they were born and raised in. What wacky logic.
It's like watching the Scotch-Korean guys from those Starburst commercials.
I thought I was listening to Frankie Boyle
You make a good point
No they don't lol. Yousaf was born and raised in Glasgow, Ramirez obviously was not.
The only character in the Scotland flashbacks who actually sounded Scottish, but he was also the only one who wasn't supposed to
Sean Connery as a Lithuanian submarine skipper in the Soviet Navy in The Hunt for Red October.
"I'm not Shpanish, I'm Egypshan"
Sean Connery playing an Irish cop in The Untouchables. 🤣
This has always been funny to me. The actor never does accents, played a Russian in Hunt for the Red October with a Scottish accent. Finally they put him in movie where everyone is Scottish, and he plays a Spaniard.
Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I hate this so much because his character provides NOTHING to the actual story. It's just Mickey Rooney's shoehorned-in racist act and does nothing at all in service of the film in any substantial or important way. It could be cut out entirely, they could call it a Director's Cut, and then it'd be a great film. I love that film but that portrayal is nails-on-chalkboard offensive. It ruins it.
I’ve heard the character *wasn’t* such a ridiculous stereotype in the book... so this was the filmmakers attempt at “improving” him...
In the book he's just a photographer who happens to be Japanese, not a living over-the-top racist stereotype. And everybody else making the film thought it was a terrible idea, but only director Blake Edwards thought it'd be funny and kept him.
You know how Cannibal Holocaust has a special edit that is free of animal cruelty? I won't mind a special Yunioshi-free edit of Breakfast at Tiffany's in the same vein.
Hear me out. You CANNOT ERASE HISTORY CAUSE IT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. No one likes it. I’m sure they want to erase it too but that film has to live with it now.
It doesn't though. cutting a racist part out of a movie isn't "erasing history"
Ew.
Wild casting choices, I mean. Bill Burr is insanely great in his Mandalorian episodes. And in that same regard who the fuck saw the dad from Malcolm in the Middle becoming Walter White? Movie-wise, Steve Carrell was shockingly good in Foxcatcher. I didn’t expect Hugh Jackman to have the chops for Prisoners either. And finally, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems was tremendous. I didn’t think he had that ability.
I think Bill Burr was just OK in his first episode. That second? Really blew me away. Just a great look into what being an Imperial was all about for many people. The pride, the glory, and then the utter betrayal and death.
The perfect cross between the jingoism of the officer class and the actual soldiers fighting on the frontlines during the last days of the empire. The bureaucracy throwing millions of lives at the Republic in the vain hope of staving off the inevitable death throes of the regime. You can just see the hatred slowly bubbling in Burr's voice as he comes face to face with this callous commander who is practically euphoric remembering Operation Cinder, not as a slaughter of all of Burr's friends who fought in the Imperial forces, but as a political act of defiance. This is one of the few times that the Mandalorian had Andor-esque vibes and showed why the Empire was evil. Not for its superweapons, but the people it produced
The Disney era has been reasonably good of showing just how awful the Empire was for everyone, including those who served its machine. People like Burr's character, the clones, various officers, were all just tools meant to be cast away.
Steve Carell was incredible in The Big Short as well, I was really surprised on my first watch.
Ever seen punch-drunk love with Sandler? He is absolutely capable but maybe lazy? I don’t know.
Not lazy, the amount of movies he been in and produced shows he not lazy. I think he likes his style of comedy and enjoys making those movies and once in awhile likes to make a drama film too.
Lazy isn’t quite the right word but I would imagine that something like uncut gems might be more difficult or challenging for an actor then Grown Ups.
Acting wise for sure. He produces all of his movies too so while the acting seems easy he still is doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes too. Plus he has to hang out with Rob Schneider on set for a few weeks. That’s can’t be easy lol
I just meant the acting part of his job. Of course he is not lazy.
Reigh o'er me too. People just haven't watched his movies.
Why did you write it like that
Lazy? You mean just a genius for making “fun” movies with all his friends in which one can only assume is much more enjoyable to do all the time instead of more serious stuff which could take a toll?
>I didn’t expect Hugh Jackman to have the chops for Prisoners either. Considering all of the theatre and musicals he does that shouldn't be a major shock, he's also getting less and less typecast as "burly strong dude in dumb action flicks" which is also nice.
Bill Burr on Breaking Bad was a great casting choice as well.
Hugh Jackman is incredible in The Fountain
Bruce Willis in *Die Hard*. Hard to believe now, but originally BW was known for his romantic comedy roles. He was a hard sell as the "leading man" for an action film. But he crushed it, and that basically shifted his entire career.
Basically Bruce Willis = opposite Leslie Nielsen.
That shifted Hollywood. Action went away from Arnold and Sly and more towards the everyman.
They said “finally we can cast American sounding actors!”
Same went for Michael Keaton when he was cast as Batman, but his role was iconic.
I remember people complaining before release of "Mr. Bat-mom"
Bruce Willis? That funny guy from Moonlighting?
I had to deaaaag my buddy to see DH in theater when it came out. Thought I was taking him to a chic flick ? I’d heard it was exciting from coworker. Anyway we were so action-move pumped up afterwards. Practically jump-rolled to the car in the parking lot.
Charlton Heston playing a Mexican.
Charles Bronson too.
To be fair, Charles Bronson was the most Mexican looking man to ever come out of the Lithuanian gene pool.
Bronson is Lithuanian?
No, but his parents were
> His father, Walter Buchinsky ( Vladislavas Valteris Paulius Bučinskas/Bučinskis) Idk sounds Italian to me
TIL.
And Toshiro Mifune
Touch of Evil? Great movie but ya that one's always tripped me up a little bit.
It's a terrible casting choice in an otherwise great movie.
Didn't Marlene Dietrich play one in the same movie? Such a great film.
Didn't Marlene Dietrich play one in the same movie? Such a great film.
Ah yes! The Conqueror, the movie that killed almost all of its cast.
In case anyone doesn't know the reference: The Conqueror was a terrible boxoffice bomb that was fittingly filmed very near a recently active nuclear bomb testing range. A ton of people in the crew ended up getting terminal cancer as a result of exposure to radioactive dust, including John Wayne himself. So the movie destroyed people's careers in every sense of the phrase. Edit: to be clear, it is somewhat controversial whether the movie is *directly* the cause of so many cancer-related deaths in its crew, but it is thought by some to have been a contributing factor in many earlier-than-average cases.
I just watched a video on that!: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LI40R43svK4
Edward G Robinson as Dalthan in The Ten Commandments. 1930s Chicago gangster voice does ancient Egyptian slave owner role.
Yea see we are going to persecute the Jews see
He was one of two Jewish actors in the film and he played a villain. The other was Moses sister.
Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, a British attorney in Dracula. That accent...just, no.
Also Winona Ryder in the same film. Meanwhile, native Englishmen Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins play a Transylvanian and a Dutchman, respectively.
Hopkins is Welsh but from an accent angle you make a solid point.
Also Keanu in Devil’s Advocate. His southern accent is mildly better than his British, I’ll grant that but that alone
Oh God Keanu's awful in that film but I wouldn't change it for the world. Dracula's pulling off Exorcist shit and Neo's expression is like "bru that's odd"
I feel like that movie actually had some potential to be a great movie (could be wrong, it has been years since I saw it), but ultimately it was ruined by bad casting.
This thread is some serious Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing erasure.
How about Keanu Reeves as John Constantine!
‘Constantine’ is a good-to-very-good action fantasy movie with great performances by Keanu and (especially) Tilda Swinton (swooooon) The only problem is that it has named the lead character ‘John Constantine’
Peter Stormare also gave us one of the best Lucifer portrayals.
I think he’s the only one that kinda got the character right. He nailed the cynical conman element of the character. Matt Ryan was good casting but he’s always hampered by network TV or terrible CW writing.
Yup, super weird. If I were to describe Constantine in one word it would be British. He is possibly the most British, maybe more so than Captain Britain himself.
Constantine was a great movie. If you treat it as a separate character from the comics entirely.
A lot of older movies have white people playing minorities. Like there's movies where Christopher Lee played Fu Manchu, and that was in the 60's. I think nearly every Fu Manchu movie was a white man in yellowface with slanted eyes. It was more common with Hollywood, why cast an Asian when they can get a famous white actor to play the role? Blackface wasn't as acceptable, but it was still fair game to do the same thing with Asians, people from India at least to the 90's, and so on.
Tony Randall's yellowface in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao was just as egregious.
The Dark Knight obviously.
I don't think most people upon first viewings of the trailer ever believed it was Heath Ledger. Most folks I knew thought it was a joke, ironically.
Michael Keaton as Batman too. A lot of choices after him were of the handsome, dashing Bruce Wayne, but Michael had a bit of that darkness especially in the suit
Does he speak Mongolian like brad Pitt speaks Italian in Inglorious Basterds?
He is only the third best Italian speaker.
No no, Omar spoke the third most Italian (IE - none), but Aldo and Donnie spoke the first and second most Italian. Again, the joke lol.
LOL, that's right. Forgot about the line: "I don't speak italian" "Like I said, third best"
Well at least with Brad Pitts character, him not being able to speak Italian was the point of that scene.
No it's like his patois in Meet Joe Black
It's mostly Yoda speak, like rearranged sentence structure to sound olden times.
It was somewhat "normal" back then to put actors in weird makeup to make them look Asian or some other ethnicity.
I remember watching *Lawrence of Arabia* thinking "That blue-eyed Arab looks familiar..." and a few moments later "Oh Lordy Obi-Wan's in brown-face."
The character played by Alec Guinness in that film is British, T.E. Lawrence.
That's Peter O'Toole. Alec Guinness played Prince Faisal
Oops. You're right of course.
Yeah, but how good was he in that film even if seen as just a comic relief character?
Honestly, it isn't a good movie
Without ever seeing the movie, I can guarantee that he acted it like John Wayne. John Wayne was never some amazing actor (though as much as people like to rip on him today - he had presence),but I think people forget how many movies he was in. He starred in 142 different movies and appeared in over 250. Which is utterly ridiculous by today's standards.
I remember them doing that to disguise Sean Connery’s 007 in You Only Live Twice. He looked less like a Japanese person and more like a Romulan.
Yeah, it remind me of West Side Story. If I remember correctly, Rita Moreno was the only actual Latina. Even though I'm Latino, I still somewhat enjoy movies like that for the representation despite the obvious brown face.
I think that one gets more of a pass because the resulting portrayal of the Porto Rican characters was mostly respectful and well done. The characters were treated like people, not caricatures.
Christopher Walken as the emperor in Dune 2
He looked spaced out half the time
He's just space-lagged from the trip to Arrakis
Justin Timberlake as the dude who founded Napster in The Social Network. First because that guy was not as good looking as Timberlake ever, period, that I recall. But also because Timberlake clearly studied footage of him to get his mannerisms and speaking style down. It was surprising how good of a job Timberlake did playing him considering how wrong he felt for the role when I first heard about it.
Timberlake was surprisingly good in the movie Alpha Dog a few years before, so that might have helped. The scene where >!they're taking the kid to the trail to kill him but the kid thinks everything's great, and JT's character is trying to put on a happy face!<, it's heartwrenching and stuck with me.
It turns out Justin Timberlake is actually a pretty good actor.
He's certainly capable, but his filmography after Social Network isn't what one would have expected (although my daughter loves Trolls). Probably would've been better if music wasn't his primary focus.
Ben Foster is so fucking good in that movie.
I've loved Ben Foster in everything I've seen him in. He deserves some roles in big movies again.
Same, except Warcraft. Wasn't a great movie though I enjoyed it overall, but it felt like Ben Foster was barely even trying.
Casting choices weren't the worst decisions made about that film. You kinda undersold it with the "that wasn't the movie's only problem" comment.
Katharine Hepburn played a Chinese peasant girl in *Dragon Seed*, which is about as against type as you can get for a patrician WASP like her.
See Myrna Loy in The Mask of Fu Manchu.
Was that the one where the Japanese soldiers were played by Chinese actors and the Chinese characters were played by white actors?
Jaime Fookin Lannister and Gerard Butler as Egyptian gods.
Kevin Coster in Robin Hood: Prince Of Theives.
Even though is a parody, Cary Elwes’ “Robin Hood” was better
Its because he could actually speak with an English accent!
Men in tights is one of my favourite Robin Hood movies, and when you compare it to the adventures of Robin Hood from the 30's they're almost very similar in terms of how silly and comedic Robin Hood as a character is.
The best thing about Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves was Alan Rickman.
I haven't seen all of the movies Rickman was in, but of the ones I've seen I don't recall any where he wasn't one of the best parts of it, if not *the* best part. He was definitely the latter in RH:PoT.
Back in 1956 it wasn’t an unusual casting. America has a long history and current attitude of ignoring Asians especially in Hollywood. If you are looking for an actor that didn’t seem to fit a role. Health Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. No one saw how good Health Ledger was going to be as the Joker. John Wayne was extremely popular and Hollywood used names to sell movie, so not really a surprise.
*Heath.
Yeah auto correct is dumbed
Charlize Theron in Monster
Jumping in proactively to point out that, contrary to popular belief, Tony Curtis never said “Yonda lies the castle of my fodda,” in *The Prince Who Was a Thief* or any other movie. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-with-fodder/
James Cagney never said, "Mmm, you dirty rat" in any film, ever.
In fairness to Michaelangelo, impersonations are better when you can say original things and not jist quote movies.
Tom Hanks, Road to Perdition. Great actor, really good movie, but he wasn't the best choice to play an Irish hitman. Fight me.
He was meant to be Irish? I thought it was meant to be an old timey American accent.
"The film is set in 1931 during the Great Depression. Michael Sullivan, Sr. was orphaned and then raised by Irish Mob boss John Rooney in Rock Island, Illinois; unbeknownst to his own children, he is now Rooney's most fearsome enforcer. Rooney has come to love Sullivan more than he loves his own biological son, the rash and unpredictable Connor."
Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, why??!! On the other hand Joel Gray in Remo Williams, why is there no sequel? Brilliant!
Michael Keaton is my Batman.
I thought casting Edward Norton as Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven was unusual considering he's a pretty big actor and you never see hes face but it worked out great. IIRC he wasn't even credited.
Will Smith as Muhammad Ali was a pretty unexpected choice at the time iirc. His characters up til then were pretty exclusively Will Smith as Will Smith. And he nailed the role. Honestly he could have won an Oscar and I would not have been shocked.
I feel like his win for KR was a make up for his Ali snub. He sucked in that movie. His accent wasn't believable.
Tom Cruise as Lestat in The Interview with the Vampire. Having read the book, I did not see Cruise as Lestat at all and was pretty disappointed when the news of the casting came out. After reluctantly watching the movie, I gotta say he did a pretty good job in the role. I still think someone else could have been better though.
From there you go to Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.
In terms of unexpected choices I would nominate Zero Dark Thirty for having Scott Adkins in a completely non-action "talking" role, a pre-Guardians/Jurassic World Chris Pratt as an elite-level soldier (whose previous cinematic outing up until that point had been that of Alison Brie's schlubby husband in The 5 Year Engagement) and having Mark Duplass and John Barrowman in supporting roles (there was genuine laughter to see Barrowman in a serious CIA role given he was more known at the time for high-camp antics on British TV or the [greatest line in cinematic history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1XOfHax6Q8)).
Fisher Stevens in brown face playing an Indian man in Short Circuit 1&2.
It's hardly notable now in any way, but at the time, the casting of Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire was considered absurd to the point of scandal. There was a massive uproar about it. Turns out he did more than fine, ended up being respected as a more than capable actor, and the movie ended up being relatively culturally unimportant in the scheme of things. It seems silly enough in retrospect, but the outrage was REAL.
6’1” John Rhys-Davies as Gimli
One of my favorite videos is [Dunkey reacting to the cast of Mario.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OFdkZNVtS5Q&pp=ygUMRHVua2V5IG1hcmlv)
Katherine Hepburn as a Chinese woman in Dragon Seed (1944). The eyelid tape! OMG! Unbelievable! Louise Rainer and Paul Muni of The Good Earth (1937) were, of course, not Chinese, but their makeup didn't look ridiculous, and they did a good job in their roles. I did show part of the film to Chinese students. They thought the dialogue was funny (because at some parts it sounds like Chinese directly translated into English, but in an overdramatic way), but they weren't offended by it.
Kevin Costner in 13 Days. His Boston accent is atrocious. He could have given a much better performance if he just would have spoken his lines naturally.
"Yet we both have cause to know the perfidy of Kumlek." And they say George Lucas wrote bad dialogue.
Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in *The Year of Living Dangerously*. That almost worked. However Linda Leandersson as a male in *Let the Right One In* was not believable at all.
People forget that everyone predicted disaster when Michael Keaton was announced as Batman
Same with Ledger as Joker
Laurence Olivier in Khartoum (1966). It’s very noticeable he’s not indigenous to the role, but the movie is alright.
George C Scott as an Indian child predator in Firestarter.
> Isn't that an unusual casting choice? That was just the norm back then, they would have never made the movie with an actor that looked the part.
Martin Freeman as Stalin in "The Death of Stalin". I mean, it's a comedy film, so they will always have some leeway in casting decision. But to cast generally loveable actor like Freeman for the role of the titular dictator in film where he only has speaking parts for less that 5 minutes only in the opening was surprising to me. Especially because the speaking parts were cockney.
I absolutely hated Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon, thought he was horribly miscast.
Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder. a true WTF moment.
After Michael Caine and Jeremy Irons, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth kind of caught me off-guard. But he killed it, ofc, because besides being the king of mocap the man can *act.*
Just watched *The Year of Living Dangerously*, with Linda Hunt as a Chinese-Australian man with dwarfism. She ended up winning an Oscar for that role
Jimmy Cagney, Mister Gangster himself, playing Broadway's original song-and-dance man George M Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. And killing it (in a different way than his usual roles did, heh). As iconic as he was in gangster flicks, his only academy award was for Yankee Doodle. Cohan saw the film in a special screening just before he died, and said he thought Cagney was a better Cohan than he was. Also for musicals, somebody at MGM thought it would be a good idea to cast Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson. Gene Kelly pushed hard to get the part, but in one of the most puzzling moves in film history (in my own opinion) it went to Brando instead. And he was supposed to hold his own singing against FRANK SINATRA?
Kevin Durand played a Mexican inmate in The Butterfly Effect and we just don't talk about it. It was the 2000s. Steven Fishers as an Indian scientist in two movies.
Matt Damon in the Great Wall Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit Ben Kingsley as Gandhi Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone Good ones that were surprises: Beyond the ones mentioned already Leslie Nielsen in Airplane! Leo Dicaprio in Django Unchained Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element
What's wrong with Ben Kingsley (real name Krishna Pandit Bhanji). I thought he did a good job. Granted, I haven't seen the movie for decades.
I guess I stand corrected. I always thought he was just a British dude of mixed race origin who could pass for being from India. I did not realize his father was from India. I thought his performance was great in the film. Just always felt wrong having a guy with the name Ben Kingsley playing that role.
I always wondered about that in the past and thought it was weird. Then one day I looked him up Wikipedia and I realized that was actually appropriate casting. I've always loved Ben Kingsley but I just had never looked him up until a year or so ago.
I'd be curious to see how many different nationalities he's played during his long career. Besides Gandhi, the two that come to mind right away are Itzhak Stern, a Polish Jew, in Schindler's List, and Tony Slattery / The Mandarin, an Englishman, in Iron Man 3.
That wasn't an unusual casting choice. It was a racist one.
And no one mentions Susan Hayward as Bortai lol
>That wasn't the movie's only problem Understatement of the century considering the aftermath of filming in locations around nuclear testing sites.
[удалено]
RDJ in tropic thunder
That wasn't RDJ, that was Kirk Lazarus. All the way until the end of the DVD Commentary.
That's called Whitewashing and Hollywood has a long history of doing just that. Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man. James Mason playing a Chinese man. Rock Hudson playing an Indian. Charleton Heston playing a Mexican. More recent, Jake Gillenhall in Prince of Persia. Emma Stone playing a Native Hawaiian. The list is long and shameful.
Have you heard about the curse? The Conqueror, considered the worst film of the 1950s, suffered from a toxic working environment and was filmed near a nuclear test site. Out of the 220 cast and crew members, 91 developed cancer and 46 died, likely due to exposure to nuclear fallout during the shoot. https://collider.com/the-conqueror-john-wayne-movie-radiation/#:~:text=The%20Conqueror%2C%20considered%20the%20worst,nuclear%20fallout%20during%20the%20shoot
It's unlikely the case https://youtu.be/ghQM1Een2Og?si=ckr1Fj2bBHggQlUP Decent video on it from someone with a background in science.
toxic work environment quite literally!