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Plays Great Ethnics
- 126 statements
- 22 feature instances
- 5 referencing feature instances
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This refers to casting practice, and in the case of Trope Codifier Peter Stormare it has even achieved the status of Casting Gag. It refers to "international" or "ethnic" - at any rate not American or British - actors who are considered to somehow look or be able to act so vaguely but conspicuously foreign that they can be used for any nationality. It's As Long as It Sounds Foreign and Gratuitous Foreign Language applied to casting. However, But Not Too Foreign is often in effect because you'll want someone who speaks good English (even though intentionally accented) and rather panders to viewers' expectations than give an accurate portrayal of a specific ethnic identity which also means that the character's background might be very vague as long as it's foreign. Note that Plays Great Ethnics can have the same Unfortunate Implications as Mistaken Nationality and/or Mistaken Ethnicity. In many cases—particularly if the actor is British—these types don't even have to look a certain way. They study the accent and dress in ethnic clothing, and use theatrical makeup. In such cases, the hiring studio will often be criticized for effectively stealing the role from other performers who actually belong to the ethnic group and are offered acting roles less frequently than white actors; others state that this defeats the purpose of acting, where the goal is to portray someone other than yourself. Across the pond, however, this is expressly forbidden in modern American media. SAG-AFTRA* created by the 2012 merger of the Screen Actors' Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists now requires that an actor at least partially share the racial background of any character they're playing, to avoid blackface and the like. However, this can be creatively interpreted, such as the half-black Dwayne Johnson playing North African characters. Often these actors were originally successful abroad before they were discovered by Hollywood. Might result in Classically-Trained Extra. May be played with by having the character himself be of ambiguous heritage or appearance. Sometimes they will make use of Blackface, Yellowface, or Brownface. Compare Man of a Thousand Faces. |
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Dropped link to BalkanizeMe: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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| Plays Great Ethnics / int_111c48dd | type |
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| Plays Great Ethnics / int_111c48dd | comment |
Israeli-born Nehemiah Persoff, of Jewish descent, probably played more different ethnicities than any other actor mentioned here. To name a few examples, he played mobster Jake Guzik on The Untouchables, an Italian councilman on Dan August, a Greek winery owner on The Streets of San Francisco and even German Nazis on The Twilight Zone (1959) and Law & Order. | |
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Jamaican actor Frank Silvera was actually a light-skinned black man, but often got cast as Hispanic characters (such as in his recurring role as Don Sebastian Montoya on The High Chaparral) or native Hawaiians (in the Hawaii Five-O episode "Paniolo", which sadly was one of his last roles before his accidental death). | |
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| Hawaii Five-O | hasFeature |
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Aquaman's father in the film is played by Temuera Morrison (NZ M�ori), who, alongside M�ori characters, has also played a Hispanic boat captain in Speed 2: Cruise Control, and the ambiguous Jango Fett and clone troopers in the Star Wars prequels. | |
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London-born actor Ritchie Coster (whose ethnic origins are Dutch) is dark-haired, dark-eyed, and has spent his career playing non-English characters of various types. He was The Chechen (a Chechen, naturally) in The Dark Knight, Mister Zoric (a Hungarian) in Let Me In, Simon Matic (a Bulgarian) in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Joey Sadano (an Italian) in American Gangster, Jorgan Stern (a Pole) in Law & Order, Fazal (a Saudi Arabian) in Traffic (2000), Nicolai Trepov (a Russian) in Hack, and the list goes on and on and on. One can count the number of times he's played English characters on both hands. | |
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In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it's stated that Liquid's part-Japanese ethnicity allowed him to pass for Turkish during his spy work. | |
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Michael Constantine, of Greek descent, has probably played more than his share of Italian characters. One of his best-known roles was the very Jewish high school principal Seymour Kaufman on Room 222. | |
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Jenette Goldstein is Jewish-American, with Brazilian and Moroccan heritage, identifying as Latina, but has been able to pass herself off as numerous different nationalities - her IMDB page even describing her as "a true chameleon". Her most famous role has her playing a Mexican and she played another Hispanic in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. She also played Irish in Titanic (1997) and The Presidio, a Caucasian blonde in Near Dark and she finally got be Jewish in Lethal Weapon 2. | |
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Omid Djalili (born in Britain to Iranian parents) is usually roped in on British TV to play anyone vaguely Middle-Eastern, North African, or even south European- he played a Greek cabbie in My Family and Other Animals in 2009. He's sneaked into a number of seriously big Hollywood films as a result of this including The Mummy (1999) and The World Is Not Enough. | |
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Naveen Andrews is mostly known for playing an Iraqi in Lost and an unspecific-Middle Eastern president in 24. Before, he did mostly his actual Indian ethnicity (such as The English Patient), and also an African in Mighty Joe Young. | |
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African-American actress Juanita Hall played Pacific Islander Bloody Mary in the 1958 film of South Pacific and Chinese-American Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song on stage and screen. | |
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Rade Šerbedžija, the actor who played Boris the Blade (Uzbekistani, although frequently simply called Russian) in Snatch., is Croatian, but he's the go-to guy for characters from anywhere in Eastern Europe, whether they're evil or not. He also played Frenchmen in South Pacific and The Quiet American. | |
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Comedian Fred Armisen is American, but his mother is Venezuelan and his father is half-German half-Korean. This has helped him play a number of sketch comedy characters on Saturday Night Live, Portlandia, and Documentary Now!. Armisen's played white guys, black guys, white women, Colombian men (not too far off the mark), Italians, even Barack Obama. (Please note for these purposes that the vast majority of Venezuelans are primarily of mixed White and Black ancestry, with some indigenous South American.) | |
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Norwegian actress of Nepalese-Ukrainian origin Amrita Acharia, who played the Dothraki handmaiden Irri on Game of Thrones for two seasons, describes herself on her Twitter page as "ambiguously foreign". | |
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The Heroes of Olympus: Piper's father Tristan is a famous Cherokee actor who never plays Cherokee characters. She mentions he's played (at least) Greek, Latino, Israeli, and Syrian characters. | |
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Melissa Marsala, whose ancestry is Chinese and Italian, is perhaps best known for her recurring role as a Puerto Rican on Six Feet Under. In addition to countless Spicy Latinas, she also played Toby's Greek-American personal assistant on The West Wing, the sister of a Mafia goon on The Sopranos, and a black woman pretending to be white on Angel. (She would rather you not mention her sordid past as a crime-fighting vampire robot.) | |
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In Spartacus: Blood and Sand, M�ori actor Antonio Te Maioha plays a North African character, Barca. | |
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Tige Andrews was really of Syrian descent, but in his regular roles on cop series, he played an Italian (Lt. Johnny Russo on The Detectives) and Captain Adam Greer on The Mod Squad. | |
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J. Carrol Naish (pronounced 'Nash'), an Irish-American (his uncle was Lord Chancellor of Ireland!), was often cast as Italian characters due to his swarthy complexion, like the character Luigi Basco that he played in the early TV sitcom Life With Luigi. He also was often cast as Orientals, and in fact played Charlie Chan in the late '50s series The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, and also was cast a few times as Indians, such as in a Green Acres episode. Not to mention Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, Pacific Islanders, and even African Americans. All this earned him the nickname "Hollywood's One-Man UN". | |
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In American Hustle, a Hispanic con artist played by Michael Peña passes himself off as an Arab sheikh. | |
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Actor Coby Bell of Third Watch and Burn Notice is biracial, and was specifically selected for the role of Jesse on Burn Notice so they would have a character who could plausibly pretend to be from a variety of ethnic backgrounds - a handy ability for a spy. | |
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Italian-British-Canadian actor Carlo Rota made a career out of playing Hispanics and Middle Easterners, and even played a Lebanese Muslim in Little Mosque on the Prairie. | |
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Bart Braverman started out playing the Italian boy Giuseppe in the "Lucy Gets Homesick in Italy" episode of I Love Lucy (credited as Bart Bradley in various TV roles from 1955 to 1962), has portrayed various Hispanic characters, Asian Indians, Bobby "Binzer" Borso on Vega$, Middle Eastern and Arab characters et al., due to his swarthy complexion. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
| Plays Great Ethnics | processingCategory2 |
Characters and Casting | |
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Discredited Trope | |
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Trivia | |
| Hey, It's That Guy! | seeAlso |
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| Golgo 13 (Manga) / int_69db8b51 | type |
Plays Great Ethnics |
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Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.