As far as facial appearance and accents are concerned, all Asians are pretty much indistinguishable to Caucasians. There's nothing wrong with that. If I went to China, Korea, Japan, or any other Asian country, chances are that nine out of ten people there, just seeing me and hearing my accent, wouldn't be able to distinguish whether I was an American from Canada or the U.S., an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, an Australian, a New Zealander, a South African, or, for that matter, a German, a Frenchman, or a Czech. I certainly wouldn't be offended or accuse them of racism if they guessed wrong. And if I were a Caucasian actor working in Japanese or Chinese film and tv, I would have no problem being cast one week as an Englishman and the next week as a Russian.
As for Cleopatra, she was of Macedonian Greek ancestry, so Elizabeth Taylor was perfectly acceptable casting, as was Claudette Colbert in the earlier movie. To have cast an Egyptian actress would have been an inaccuracy.
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Mustang (5254)
a month ago
Yeah I think some people take it too seriously. Like John Wayne playing Genghis Kahn, Mongolian actors were probably hard to find at the time in Hollywood and even if they found one would they draw an audience and would that also mean the rest of the cast would have to be Mongolian too to avoid contrast?
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strntz (10934)
a month ago
If I went to China, Korea, Japan, or any other Asian country, chances are that nine out of ten people there, just seeing me and hearing my accent, wouldn't be able to distinguish whether I was an American from Canada or the U.S., an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, an Australian, a New Zealander, a South African, or, for that matter, a German, a Frenchman, or a Czech. I certainly wouldn't be offended or accuse them of racism if they guessed wrong.
Excellent point.
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