Let’s face it: Hollywood has a long and awkward history when it comes to casting that crosses the line from “creative liberty” to full-blown cultural erasure. Studios have been substituting real representation for star power for years, turning full cultures into caricatures. If you’ve ever watched a big movie and thought, “Wait… wasn’t that character supposed to be Asian?” or “Why does this Egyptian god sound Scottish?”-you’re definitely not alone. So, grab your popcorn and a side of disbelief as we count down 10 of the most infamous whitewashed roles in Hollywood, ranked for maximum dramatic effect.
10. Laurence Olivier as Othello — The Original Blackface Disaster
Long before “cancel culture” was a term, Hollywood was happily painting white actors in blackface. Laurence Olivier’s turn as Othello in the 1965 adaptation of Shakespeare’s play may have earned him critical praise at the time, but today it’s remembered as one of cinema’s most glaring missteps. The performance wasn’t just uncomfortable; it was a reminder of how normalized racist portrayals once were in mainstream entertainment.
9. Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal — A Desert of Bad Choices
Before Alec Guinness was everyone’s favorite Jedi, he was cast as Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia. The real Feisal was Arab; Guinness, of course, was not. His brownface performance, though it was once seen as “acceptable,” now constitutes an obvious erasure of authentic Middle Eastern representation within one of cinema’s most iconic epics.
8. Matt Damon in The Great Wall — White Savior Syndrome Strikes Again
Hollywood tends to place a white savior into nonwhite stories, and The Great Wall is a textbook case. Matt Damon plays a European mercenary who somehow ends up the key to saving ancient China. Filmmakers insisted his role wasn’t “meant to be Chinese,” but the optics screamed otherwise. Viewers saw it as what it was-a tired “white savior” trope.
7. Gerard Butler in Gods of Egypt — Egyptian Myths, Scottish Accents
If Ancient Egypt looked suspiciously like a European fantasy in Gods of Egypt, well, that’s basically because it was. Gerard Butler, playing the god Set, leads a cast so white, it’s practically glowing. The backlash was swift, and instead of listening, the director doubled down and insulted critics. The film became a cautionary tale in cultural misrepresentation and a meme factory.
6. Christian Bale as Moses — The “Financing” Excuse
Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings reimagined Ancient Egypt with a line-up of white leads, including Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as Ramses. When asked why he didn’t hire ethnically appropriate actors, Scott famously said he couldn’t get the movie funded otherwise. The comment caused outrage-and reminded everyone that systemic bias doesn’t just happen onscreen, but behind the scenes too.
5. Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One — A Mystic Without Roots
Marvel’s Doctor Strange took a much-loved Asian mentor figure and made them a Celtic mystic played by Tilda Swinton. While Marvel justified the move as “a creative choice,” their fans and critics perceived the role as another missed opportunity for genuine Asian representation. The Ancient One went from Himalayan monk to mystical abstraction, and the debate over it rages on.
4. Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi — Comedy Turned Catastrophe
If there’s one performance that makes modern audiences cringe physically, then it’s Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. With fake teeth, taped eyelids, and an exaggerated accent, Rooney turned a Japanese character into a fully-fledged stereotype. Decades later, it is still mentioned among the most offensive racist performances to go down in Hollywood history.
3. Emma Stone as Allison Ng — Whitewashing the Pacific
Aloha cast Emma Stone as a character who was part Chinese and part Native Hawaiian. The problem? She’s neither. Setting the film in a Hawaii place steeped in cultural identity only made the misstep that much more glaring. The backlash was loud enough that even Stone later said the role was a mistake.
2. Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi — Lost in Translation
When Ghost in the Shell was first announced, fans were ecstatic until Scarlett Johansson was cast as a cybernetic Japanese heroine. Critics tore the film apart for erasing a distinctly Japanese identity, reducing a story of authentic cultural exploration to a slick sci-fi blockbuster. What could’ve been a huge milestone for Asian representation became one of Hollywood’s most notorious whitewashing controversies.
1. Jonathan Pryce as The Engineer: Miss Saigon and Yellowface on Stage
First on the list is Miss Saigon, in which Jonathan Pryce, an English actor, created the role of the French-Vietnamese character known as The Engineer. His use of prosthetics and putting on an accent drew fierce criticism and protests from Asian-American performers. Such controversy exposes the theater’s blind spots and brings up broader discussions of race, casting, and opportunity.
Hollywood’s legacy of whitewashing is not just a spate of bad decisions; it is a reflection of who gets seen, who gets silenced, and who gets erased. Every one of these examples reminds us why authentic representation matters. Casting isn’t just about filling a role-it’s about telling someone’s story truthfully. And it’s long past time Hollywood started doing that.