10 Bizarre Movie Casting Decisions That Made No Sense

Did you hear the one about Joseph Fiennes being cast as Michael Jackson? Well, turns out it's not a joke. It has been reported that Ralph's brother will indeed be playing the King of Pop in the upcoming TV movie Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, something that, predictably, provoked outrage in certain quarters, with people angry over the decision to hire a white English man to play an African-American musician. For the most part, though, people were just stunned. Fiennes isn't alone in being a real left field choice in the world of moviemaking (he's not even alone in being a bizarre casting choice for Jackson - did you know Diego Luna played Jacko once?). Over the years, producers have been making all kinds of ridiculous casting decisions, swapping gender and even race around like logic was just being tossed to the wind. It's happening more and more often these days, too, and so, we've decided to look back on ten utterly batshit casting decisions that made no sense then, and sure as hell don't make any sense now. 10) Cate Blanchett As Bob Dylan In I'm Not There It's rare that Hollywood movies dare to defy convention when it comes to gender: race-swapping has, apparently, been deemed OK since cinema began (hello, Birth of a Nation), but gender-swapping has always been less prevalent. I'm Not There features a rare example of a female actor taking on a male role. In Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan biopic, Cate Blanchett takes on the role of the 60s folk icon, electro-shocked wig and all. In the context of the film, it makes sense: Dylan is variously played as young, old, black, white, male and female by six different actors, one of whom happens to be Blanchett. She also funnily enough happens to offer the most convincing portrait of Dylan of the lot, astoundingly looking more like Dylan than any of the male cast members. 9) John Wayne As Genghis Khan In The Conqueror When you think John Wayne, you almost certainly think all-American hero, rarely seen without a cowboy hat or out of combat fatigues. By and large, there were two types of performance Wayne gave in his career: cowboy and soldier. Oh, and there was also that time he played 12th century warrior and Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan. Dick Powell's Khan biopic The Conqueror has been regularly dubbed one of the worst of all time, with the casting of Wayne as the great Mongol chieftain considered particularly misjudged. Almost as misjudged as Powell's decision to shoot the film down wind of a nuclear weapons testing site. Even the 1950s thought this was bad taste, with critics at the time observing that Wayne was, to put it mildly, miscast. 8) Gary Oldman As A Man With Dwarfism In Tiptoes What's interesting about the film Tiptoes is it's one of very few Hollywood movies to highlight what it's like to be a dwarf without patronizing the community; it's one of few Hollywood films to actually provide a meaty role for a dwarf actor - in this case, Peter Dinklage, a fine, Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor; and it's one of even fewer Hollywood films that has thought it best to cast an average-sized actor as a character with dwarfism. Yes, despite having a great dwarf actor right there in the cast, Tiptoes director Matthew Bright had the idea to give all five feet seven inches of Gary Oldman the lead dwarf role. Those critics that didn't blast the decision as insensitive said it was one of Oldman's better performances, while still conceding that the film was basically appalling. 7) Linda Hunt As A Male Chinese-Australian Dwarf In The Year of Living Dangerously What tops a person of average height playing a dwarf, a Caucasian playing an Asian, and a woman playing a man? Why all three combined, of course! In Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, the character of Billy Kwan, an Australian-Chinese photojournalist with dwarfism, is played by the very American, very female Linda Hunt. The reaction to the film and Hunt's portrayal shows how different attitudes were just 34 years ago when this film was released: not only did critics and audiences respond favorably to The Year of Living Dangerously, but AMPAS thought Hunt played the part so well that they gave her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. 6) Emma Stone As A Native Hawaiian In Aloha One thing that no one's ever said is how much Emma Stone resembles the native peoples of Hawaii. And so, naturally, Cameron Crowe - in one of the more controversial casting decisions in recent memory - handed Stone the part of the Hawaiian native Allison Ng in his romantic-comedy bomb Aloha. Crowe's argument was that Stone's character was a "one quarter Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one." Which did nothing to stop the shitstorm of controversy heading his way, as the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans accused the director of straight-up whitewashing. Luckily for Crowe, hardly anyone else saw the film. 5) Everybody In Exodus: Gods And Kings A biblical extravaganza, about the exodus of Hebrews led by Moses out of Egypt, Exodus: Gods and Kings seemed like a perfect opportunity for Hollywood to show off a newfound penchant for diversity in the 21st century. So who does director Ridley Scott cast in his action epic? Why a cast full of white British, American and Australian actors of course. Exodus' stars include Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn and Sigourney Weaver, all playing Egyptians. More astonishing was Scott's response when asked why Exodus was this goddamn white: "I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I'm just not going to get it financed." Blunt, but at least now you know why Mohammad So-And-So From Such-And-Such never gets any work. 4) Mickey Rooney As An Incredibly Stereotypical Japanese Man In Breakfast At Tiffany's Oh boy. People regularly refer to Breakfast At Tiffany's as a favorite, but even when they do, the general rule is that they also have to address the elephant in the room: director Blake Edwards' near film-ruining decision to cast impish American comedian Mickey Rooney as an essentially breathtakingly offensive Japanese character named Mr Yunioshi. You can put Rooney's casting down as 'of its time,' but even during the film's production producer Richard Shepherd objected and expressed his opinion that a Japanese actor should be cast in the role instead. Edwards ignored him, and that's how we ended up with one of the more notoriously offensive characters in a Hollywood classic. 3) Christopher Lee As Founder Of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah The late, great Christopher Lee was inescapably English. It was the stiff upper lip, the cut-glass accent, the general air of solemn decency. You like most people probably think of him as a stereotypically upper crust Englishman (albeit one who also used to make heavy metal albums). Which is why Jamil Dehlavi's Jinnah is such a jarring experience. In Dehlavi's biopic, Lee plays Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan who was born and raised in what was originally British India. Lee considered it an important film, and his performance in it his all-time best. None of which distracts from the fact that it's a very serious drama with Sir Christopher Lee, a descendant of King Charlemagne himself, in fairly ill-advised brownface. 2) Angelina Jolie As Mariane Pearl In A Mighty Heart Remember that time Angelina Jolie effectively blacked up for a part? Maybe not - A Mighty Heart isn't a particularly well-remembered movie, and those that do recognize it tend to on the basis that it's that movie where Jolie wore a black frizzy wig, tanned her skin darker and sported brown contact lenses to play a part Afro-Cuban, part Dutch-Jewish woman. In this case, the request for the odd casting choice was made by the woman Jolie would be playing herself. Mariane Pearl, whom the protagonist of A Mighty Heart is based on, personally asked for Jolie to play her in her story. The film still came in for controversy, though, likely none of which troubled director Michael Winterbottom, who's subjected audiences to much worse (see The Killer Inside Me, if you're curious). 1) Oscar Isaac As Any Nationality In Everything The word 'chameleon' is thrown around all too often these days. We apply it to the likes of Tom Hardy, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jake Gyllenhaal. All talented, adaptable performers, all of whom - respectfully - can play nothing other than Caucasian males. Then you have Oscar Isaac. Born in Guatemala but raised in Miami, Isaac is of Guatemalan, Cuban and French ancestry. And he plays different nationalities like he's collecting stamps: American, as well as Russian (PU-239), Cuban (Che), Middle-Eastern (Body of Lies), English (Robin Hood), Roman (Agora), Welsh-Italian (Inside Llewyn Davis), and soon, Egyptian (X-Men: Apocalypse). It would be more 'bizarre' still if Isaac wasn't so damn convincing at pretending to hail from every single one of those countries.