As actors ponder their Emmy acceptance speeches for Sept 12, one wonders whether some incipient Adrian Lester envy might creep into their thoughts.
Lester, the Black British actor, won a Tony nomination for playing both a German Jewish banker and a female character in The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway.
At the Emmys, actors like Jennifer Coolidge and Steve Martin will likely win kudos for essentially playing themselves, with great aplomb.I empathize with the tensions facing actors today: They covet the opportunity to display their “range,” but also understand the risks inherent in boundary crossing.
Even Tom Hanks expresses regret for depicting a gay protagonist in Philadelphia (1993) and James Franco is catching it for playing Fidel Castro.The woke-phobic Bill Maher raged this week against critics of Helen Mirren for portraying Golda Meir, but some still rail on Mickey Rooney for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.But type-casting, or resistance to it, is just one of an array of problems confronting the acting profession at the moment.
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