In Or Out: On Keanu, Akira, and expectations for multiracial actors

There are some actors like Reeves, who are able to play characters from many different backgrounds because of their many different ethnicities. Lou Diamond Phillips–who is Scots-Irish, 1/4 Cherokee, Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Hawaiian–is one such actor, having played Native American/Mexican outlaw “Jose” Chavez y Chavez in Young Guns and Young Guns 2, The King in the Broadway revival of The King and I, Ritchie Valens in La Bamba, and Latino student Angel Guzman in Stand and Deliver.

Johnny Depp is also a multi-ethnic actor. You might recall the recent mulling over Johnny Depp has been doing over revising the role of Tonto in the upcoming reboot of The Lone Ranger. Depp, who is part Cherokee or Creek Native-American through his great-grandmother, said to Entertainment Weekly that he is making sure Tonto is not the sidekick he was in the show; Depp’s Tonto aims to be what he felt Tonto should’ve been in the show, which is being a more proactive character instead of a slap-in-the-face to Native American viewers.  Depp’s family history also has ties to French Hugenots.

Another example is Taylor Lautner, who has been featured in Moniqueblog’s “Native American Pride” section. He is Dutch, French, German, and has distant relations on his mother’s side to the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes. Because of this, he has been able to portray Native American Jacob Black in the Twilight series.

With all of this said, however,  it would appear Reeves’ multi-ethnicity hasn’t cut the mustard with a big number of commenters on the aforementioned movie sites; they think Reeves is only white, therefore, they are glad he’s not in the movie.

This type of assumption and backlash is some of what actors and actresses who are part African-American have to deal with. They know of their white heritage, but in quite a few circumstances, they are only accepted by the public as black. Halle Berry is half Caucasian and half black, but is only labelled by Hollywood as “African-American” . In fact, Berry has stated many times that she identifies as “African-American”. (In a similar vein, Mohawk actress Kaniehtiio Horn, who is half Caucasian, has said “I am a Mohawk, a Mohawk woman, even if I don’t look like one.”) Other thespians such as Shemar Moore, Lisa Bonet, Thandie Newton, and Karyn Parsons are biracial but are generally thought of by the public (and possibly by Hollywood) as simply “black” because they “look” black and/or because they’ve played black characters, when in fact, many biracial actors have played biracial characters; for example, Parsons played a biracial woman in Mixing Nia.

But, there are other biracial actors and actresses like Jennifer Beals and Rashida Jones who, while not shunning their African-American heritage, do have the ability to be cast as other ethnicities in film and television because of their light skin tone. However, both Beals and Jones have stated their opinions on this: Beals has a history of asking for her characters to be biracial and has played a biracial woman passing for white in the film Devil in a Blue Dress, and in an interview with Women’s Health Magazine, Jones speaks openly about being thought of as “not black enough”:

RJ: My parents were crazy cool and I was a straight up geek. I wanted to be a lawyer, a judge, president…

WH: And instead, you became…an actress!

RJ: That was never the plan! But I always wanted to pursue theater and my black cultural identity. In my second year at college, I did the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, and it was so healing. It was an incredible experience.

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