Quotes / Fake Nationality

Fiction

"Eye wezh bohrne endh raizhed en thu deshurt!"

— Captain Beefheart

Get rid of that accent.

— Hilly Kristal to Merv Ferguson, CBGB

You're all from Nebraska! Cut it out!

— Mike Nelson about three characters, Mystery Science Theater 3000, "The Atomic Brain"

Creators

Another mafioso role for me. This time I played the head of Smoke Enders, using Mafia techniques to make people quit smoking. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer, had seen me impersonate wise guys in other movies, and he swore I was Italian.
"No, I'm Jewish."
"Unh-huh. You gotta be Italian, you got every gesture. Maybe your grandfather?"
"No, my grandfather was Jewish, from Russia."
"His father?"
He simply would not take my word for it.

—Alan King on Cat's Eye (1985), Name Dropping

Beverly D'Angelo: I'm a very, very, very Italian girl. My grandmother was a letter-bride, came over when she was 15; my grandfather came over, built railroads; I went to school in Italy; I speak Italian; I lived there '81-'85; my first husband...I'm as Italian as you can get, and I have never gotten offered or even considered for an Italian part! Because I don't act like what everybody thinks an Italian person acts like!
Cathy Moriarty: I'm not even Italian; I'm full-blooded Irish and I always get cast as Italian.
D'Angelo: I would KILL for an Italian role!

—Dinner For Five

In The Reader, Kate, English, plays a German, nominated.

In Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr., who was an American, playing an Australian, playing an African-American, nominated.

Where's me?

I'm an Australian, playing an Australian in a movie called Australia... hosting.

— Hugh Jackman's opening monologue for the 81st Academy Awards

I started out on Broadway in the original production of Yentl and won awards for it, and then when the move came out with Barbra Streisand they said, 'We wanna do it authentically, we wanna put all-Jewish people in the cast'....I went, 'I just did it for a year on Broadway!', and they said,'We don't care! You're Irish-Catholic!'

—John Shea

We've got an American show with a Kiwi playing an all-American hero psychopath and another Kiwi playing an Englishman. It's a pretty bizarre mix-up.

— Antony Starr on him and Karl Urban starring in The Boys (2019)

Reviews

I'm starting to get the feeling that Suki Yaki's actor, George Stone, isn't really Japanese.

— The Cinema Snob, The Devil with Hitler

Either Seagal is the biggest fraud on the planet or he genuinely happens to transcend race and transforms into new ethnicities over time, kind of like a fucked up Dr Who.

—"The Ridiculousness of Steven Seagal"

Chris: To be fair, it’s pretty understandable why Liu Kang would think that Raiden was a fraud, since most Japanese thunder gods don’t tend to look like French dudes.
Matt: Raiden was born in the United States, educated in the Swiss Alps, and then moved to Japan to become a god. Makes perfect sense.

—Chris Sims and Matt Wilson on Mortal Kombat: The Movie

Most of the reason for the mockery is for Nic Cage and his over the top Italian accent. 'BELLA BAMBINA AT TWO O CLOCK!' You know, I don’t begrudge an actor who knows he can’t do a dignified job with an accent and just speaks English. In fact, I admire him. It’s when we get attempts like this that we really laugh. I kept expecting Nic to exclaim 'That’s a spicy meat-a-ball!' at the end of every line.

—Miles Antwiler on Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

But there's nothing, and I mean nothing more hilarious than watching Michelle Rodriguez scowl and attempt a British accent. It's like watching your mother try to open a can of pickles.

—Noah Antwiler on Bloodrayne

One of the prisoners is Samantha Mendez (Steph Song). Right. If her last name is Mendez, then I’m Kamala Muta Hassan. At least Paul Diamond put a mask on when he was part of The Orient Express. No way you could tell he was a donut-eating, curling-loving, moose-riding Canucklehead.

—Wrestlecrap, "Maximum Convinction" - Fortunately Also Minimum Seagal"

They should’ve known that Aloha wouldn't end well as soon as Emma Stone was cast as a woman named Allison Ng who is a quarter Hawaiian, a quarter Chinese and a quarter Swedish. The Swedish part must have eaten the Chinese and Hawaiian parts.

—Michael K., "That Movie Where Emma Stone Plays Part-Asian Only Made $10 Million"

David Carradine is Elvis of kung fu, having the honorable distinction of helping to pioneer western martial arts movies only by virtue of blatant racism. He is most famous for playing the lead in the 1970s kung fu serial, creatively titled Kung Fu, winning the part from Bruce Lee, even though Lee helped create the show for the sole purpose of acting in it. Apparently no one told Bruce that at that time Chinese people were considered 'too Chinese' to play Chinese people.

—Cracked, "5 Movie Martial Artists That Lost a Deathmatch to Dignity"

I will say one thing negative about Boreanaz’s otherwise stellar performance, and that is his Irish accent needs some more work and is barely comprehensible at times (although this isn’t entirely untrue of Irish enunciation).

—Doc Oho on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Patrick Stewart is British, Jean-Luc Picard is French. That said, he’s played straightforwardly in an English accent, and the constant sense is that Gene Roddenberry may have had a somewhat hazy sense of the fact that there was a material difference.

—El Sandifer on Star Trek: The Next Generation

Imagine a movie about an honorable samurai clan filmed in New Zealand and starring an American. Am I the only person who sees a problem with this? Where do we draw the line? I mean, why not make a movie about Zulu warriors starring James Hong? Or a movie about US Marines starring drunken kung-fu master Simon Yuen?

— Maddox, "Five shitty movies that everyone loves."

Chris Pratt is a gentile and as such is not party to the 1947 treaty between Jews and Italians that allows us to play each other in movies. He does not come from a yelling-based culture.

— BobbyBigWheel on Twitter

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