1.
Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl, the wife of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl and a French-born woman of Afro-Cuban descent, in A Mighty Heart.
Jolie appeared to darken her skin and change her hair for the role, which resulted in a ton of criticism.
She regrets taking the role and said in an interview, “I’ve learned on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood and how prevalent the problem truly is. It’s ignited a conversation that’s very important.” In 2019, she yelled “I’m sorry!” to Sandra Oh when she made a joke about it at the Golden Globes.
3.
Jake Gyllenhaal played Dastan in Disney’s Prince of Persia. Many have questioned why the role didn’t go to an actor of Iranian descent.
In an interview, Gyllenhaal acknowledged his problematic casting, “I think I learned a lot from that movie in that I spend a lot of time trying to be very thoughtful about the roles that I pick and why I’m picking them… And you’re bound to slip up and be like, ‘That wasn’t right for me,’ or ‘That didn’t fit perfectly.'”
4.
Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese man, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
For the role, Rooney did Yellowface, wore buckteeth, and used an exaggerated accent. He received lots of criticism from Asian Americans for his racist portrayal.
He responded to the criticism saying, “Never in all the more than 40 years after we made it — not one complaint. Every place I’ve gone in the world people say, ‘ … you were so funny.’ Asians and Chinese come up to me and say, ‘Mickey you were out of this world.'” He said that if he’d known people would have been so offended, “I wouldn’t have done it.”
5.
Anthony Hopkins played Coleman Silk, a Black professor who passes as white, in The Human Stain.
6.
Rooney Mara played Tiger Lily, a Native American character, in Pan.
A year after the film, Mara expressed regret saying, “I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation. I really do. I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.”
7.
Joseph Fiennes played pop star Michael Jackson, a Black man, in an episode of the comedy, Urban Myths.
After the trailer was released, it was met with a lot of controversy. Many people called for a boycott, a petition against the film got over 20,000 supporters, and Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter, stated how offended she was by the casting. After all the controversy the broadcaster, Sky Arts, decided not to air the episode.
8.
In Soul Man, C. Thomas Howell played Mark Watson, a white man who does blackface to get a Harvard scholarship for Black students.
In a 2013 interview, Howell expressed no regrets about the movie. He said he’d recently rewatched the movie and was “shocked at how truly harmless that movie is, and how the anti-racial message involved in it is so prevalent. I still don’t understand, and I guess this is just my own ignorance, the fact that certain people really hate the whole blackface idea, because this isn’t a movie about blackface,” Howell continued. “It’s not like I’m Al Jolson in blackface singing ‘Mammy.’ … It’s 180 degrees from that. It’s an innocent movie, it’s got innocent messages, and it’s got some very, very deep messages. And I think the people that haven’t seen it that judge it are horribly wrong.”
9.
Sean Connery played James Bond going undercover as a Japanese man in the film You Only Live Twice. The movie included countless racist stereotypes.
10.
Scarlett Johansson played Major Mira Killian / Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell. The casting received a lot of criticism since the movie was based on a Japanese manga.
Johansson responded to the backlash by saying, “I think this character is living a very unique experience in that she has a human brain in an entirely machinate body. I would never attempt to play a person of a different race, obviously.”
11.
Tilda Swinton played the Ancient One in Doctor Strange. In the comics, the Ancient One was portrayed as a Tibetan man.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige later said this casting was a mistake. Feige and Swinton also explained the casting as an attempt to avoid offensive Asian racial stereotypes.
“We thought we were being so smart and so cutting-edge,” Feige said. “We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.”
12.
And finally, Jenette Goldstein played private Vasquez, a Latino woman, in Aliens.
Goldstein is Jewish and of Russian, Moroccan, and Brazilian descent. For the role, she darkened her skin with makeup. Years after, she said, “I have never been cast, or given the opportunity to audition for a short, freckle-faced Jewish girl who is half-Russian and half-Moroccan and Brazilian. So I don’t think I would work very much if that’s all I was able to read for.”