Worst instances of mis-casting ethnically -- people who don't look the part of their character.

[sean]

Sir Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962):

[Linebacker]

A few years back when the Witcher show aired the grossly misscasted Triss was all the rage.

Think stuff like that is more disrespectful to the writer than anything else, he had descriptions and even illustrations in his book how the characters look like and yet the producers decided to diversify them either way.

[alnortedelsur]

Lots of examples of this with Spaniards, when very ignorant movie directors have put mestizos, and even Caribbean triracials to play the role of ethnic Spaniards

[Creoda]

Omar Sharif played a South German in the Thirty Years War in The Last Valley, and a Nazi officer in The Night of the Generals. He pulls it off better than Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal, but still shouldn't have been cast as anything more than Southern Euro.

[Tsuin]

Keith Stanfield (Black American) portrayed L Lawliet who is Eurasian (50% Japanese 25% British 25% Russian) in that live action Netflix dumpster fire a couple years back

[Homo Insapiens]

Black casts for slavery movies, 12 years a slave, Roots, they’re so light & mixed compared to what would have been the historical reality. Producers can fix this by using pure black casts, but such a topic would probably be considered politically incorrect now.

Actually now I notice that most historical media don’t get the appearances of the people historically accurate, including Bollywood & Southeast Asian historical movies, the casts tend to be too light compared to what would have been historically accurate. I’m a history buff, so tend to notice these small details more here.

[Peter Parker]

Charlton Heston as El Cid (1961):

[alnortedelsur]

Gleen Close in the role of a white Chilean of full/mostly Spanish descent in the movie "The House of The Spirits"

She is too squarish/Nordic and could not pass as ethnic Spanish/Spanish descent even in jest.

[Tooting Carmen]

Gleen Close in the role of a white Chilean of full/mostly Spanish descent in the movie "The House of The Spirits"

She is too squarish/Nordic and could not pass as ethnic Spanish/Spanish descent even in jest.

For that matter, Meryl Streep has very un-Hispanic features IMO too.

[alnortedelsur]

For that matter, Meryl Streep has very un-Hispanic features IMO too.

Yeah, she is another good example of somebody making the role of ethnic Spanish, who don't pass as full/mostly ethnic Spaniard, just like Gleen close.

Wynona Ryder also played the role of a white Chilean of Spanish stock in that same movie, but Wynona Ryder would definitively pass, unlike Meryl Streep or Gleen Close.