Six Films Featuring Indian Characters Played by Western Actors
The Love Guru
Tyrone Power, The Rains Came (1939): For a lot longer than seems necessary, Eastern characters in Hollywood films weren't, with few exceptions, played by Eastern actors. The film version of Charlie Chan was played by a Swede (Warner Oland) and later a Scotsman (Sidney Toler), while the progressive doctor-turned-major at the center of this lavish Darryl F. Zanuck production was played by matinee idol Tyrone Power in dark makeup. Not much changed when the film was remade in 1955, which replaced Power with Richard Burton.
Jean Simmons, Black Narcissus (1947): Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's psychodrama about sexually repressive nuns in the Himalayas was made entirely on a soundstage, but the artificiality hardly stops there. Though they cast mono-named Indian superstar Sabu for the role of his lower-caste babe object of affection, they also cast the decidedly English future star of Hamlet and Spartacus in a major role.
Peter Sellers, The Party (1968): As a bumbling Indian movie extra accidentally invited to a Hollywood soiree after destroying a remake of Gunga Din, Sellers is a strong enough comic genius to largely compensate for going questionably brown-face. But not everyone was amused: Legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray called off an in-talks collaboration with the actor after seeing his performance.
Alec Guinness, A Passage to India (1984): It didn't make much sense when David Lean cast Guinness as an Arab prince in Lawrence of Arabia, but dang it if he didn't do it again for his final film, forcing the chameleonic actor to play Indian among such actual Indian natives as lead Victor Banerjee.
Fisher Stevens, Short Circuit (1986): How to atone for that black hole of charisma that is Steve Guttenberg? Pair him with a white guy doing an impersonation of an Indian emigre so over-the-top it makes Al Jolson in blackface look like a civil rights leader.
Mike Myers, The Love Guru (2008): Senator, you're no Peter Sellers.
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