Asian Actors and the Academy: Triumphs and Snubs
Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 1:05PM Robert here. On Tuesday British actor Dev Patel became only the third actor of Indian descent to be nominated for an Academy Award. His nomination came amongst a renewed embrace of diversity (which is something to celebrate, but not rest on) after two years of completely white sets of nominees.
The Oscars – and, of course, the film industry at large – have long courted controversy for their issues with diversity, and Asian actors across the board have long been overlooked and undervalued. Often they are cast in flat, stereotyped roles, or as we've been made much more aware of lately, the roles of leading characters of Asian descent are given to white actors. Before Dev there have been several actors of Asian descent whose strong work has garnered them award attention, and even more who were snubbed despite memorable performances.
A brief retrospective is after the jump:
Of the two other actors of Indian descent who have scored Oscar nominations, the most famous is British legend and (in my opinion) timeless hunk Sir Ben Kingsley, who won best actor in 1982 for his role as political leader Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi . He was nominated three subsequent times for House of Sand and Fog, Bugsy and Sexy Beast. The other is old Hollywood starlet Merle Oberon – of mixed British and Indian ancestry, a fact she tried to hide from the public – was nominated in 1935 for wartime thriller The Dark Angel.
Oberon is the only woman of any kind of Asian heritage to be nominated for best actress, but there have been several that could be considered snubs. Chinese actress Gong Li won multiple awards worldwide for her performance in Raise the Red Lantern, while Michelle Yeoh and Zang Ziyi both entertained awards talk for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. More recently, Kim Hye-ja won a slew of international awards for her staring turn in South Korean film Mother.
On the supporting actress side of things there are Miyoshi Umeki, who won the award in 1957 for Sayonara, and nominees Rinko Kikuchi for Babel and sisters Meg (Agnes of God) and Jennifer Tilly (Bullets Over Broadway), who are of mixed Chinese and European heritage.
One of my all-time favorite film performances is Mieko Harada as the vengeful Lady Kaede in Kurosawa's masterpiece Ran. It is a performance of such physical menace and measured line readings that it could be studied in acting classes. She was unfortunately snubbed, despite Ran's international success.
Best supporting actor has seem several nominations for actors of Asian descent. Well known thespians such as Ken Watanabe for The Last Samurai and Pat Morita in The Karate Kid are the most remembered, but there have been less well-known actors nominated, including Haing S. Ngor, who won for The Killing Fields in 1984. The list of snubs would be long, but we'd have to start with whichever Chinese actor lost out for Linda Hunt's role in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983).
Reader Comments (33)
Thank you! The diversity conversation needs to be broadened beyond black and white. It's amazing how prevalent the stereotypes are, whether the noble Orientalism of Doctor Strange (a technically gorgeous film blind to its own cultural appropriation) or the "Asian menace" of Daredevil's season 2 ninja scourge.
Sessue Hayakawa and Mako also showed up in the Supporting Actor category for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Sand Pebbles (1966), respectively.
It's a shame the Supporting Actress category wasn't around in 1932 when Anna May Wong could have grabbed a nomination for Shanghai Express.
Has anyone seen Constance Wu's takedown of Casey Afflek?
She's amazing
Another favorite performance of mine was Jeong-hie Yun in Poetry, who won LAFCA in 2010.
2005's Supporting Actress winner should have been Gong Li for Memoirs Of A Geisha
Oh my god yes @ Harada in Ran. Such hypnotic power and intensity.
And of course a big yes @ Li and all the other women you mention.
It was hardly a 'snub' in any traditional sense but one low-key, unfairly neglected, stubbornly unpredictable and gorgeously lived-in performance is Deanie Yip's in A Simple Life a few years back. Apparently she's a screen legend in her home country but not a lot of her filmography has crossed over. A shame.
Yul Brynner (Eurasian, or Euro-North Asian) is an interesting case, considering that his Oscar-winning performance is considered yellowface.
The biggest snub in the leading races surely has to be Zhang Ziyi for Memoirs of a Geisha, right? She was undoubtedly in 6th place that year and had major precursor support.
I would have loved to see a nomination for Lucy Liu in Kill Bill and Gong Li for Farewell, My Concubine as well as the ones you mentioned. Plus, other films deserving actor love: In the Mood For Love, Happy Together, Hero, Tokyo Story, Seven Samurai, the list goes on and on...
One part of the diversity problem and their history with recognizing Asian stories is that even when films like Ran, Slumdog Millionaire, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon get major nominations, nothing for their actors. I thought Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yoeh were nomination worthy in Crouching Tiger. Also, Kim Min-Hee from The Handmaiden, Lucy Liu in Kill Bill Vol.1, Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler, Joan Chen in Saving Face, Leslie Cheung in Happy Together, etc.
The more robust critique ought to be #OscarSoBinary
...or #HollywoodSoBinary
Binary a term that only matters to gender queers.
Oscar loved Memoirs of a Geisha and still couldn't nominate Gong Li or even Zhang Ziyi.
Most glaring omission that immediately comes to mind is Victor Banerjee, not nominated for "A Passage to India," and who quite frankly gave the best male performance in 1984. The Best Actor category was pretty awful (except Sam Waterston).that year. All ia not forgiven for David Lean, who extracted perfect perfs from Judy Davis, Peggy Ashcroft, and Banerjee. He cast Alec Guinness in a key Asian role.
John Lone could have had two possible nominations in back to back years:
Best Actor (The Last Emperor) and Best Supporting Actor (Year of the Dragon)
Even though she was a native of Tahiti in French Polynesia, which is part of Oceania, we should include in this list non-professional actress Jocelyne Lagarde. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Hawaii (1966), opposite Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow and Richard Harris. She is the only performer to be nominated for an Oscar for their only film ever.
Gosh, Dev Patel makes me want an adult or go to Church - that man has blossomed into a fine specimen.
I certainly would’ve nominated Hong Kong born Nancy Kwan for Best Actress in 1960 for “The World of Suzie Wong”. A startlingly beautiful young woman, she also had talent to spare and (opposite superstar William Holden) more than held her own with a touching, nuanced performance. The movie was a smash in its day. And Kwan’s legacy as an iconic Asian-born actress who became, at least for a time, a popular star in western films endures. There’s a 2010 documentary about her journey through and beyond that stardom called “To Whom It May Concern” and it’s worth watching.
And – yes – Gong Li should have accumulated at least four Oscar nominations by now, including a couple of wins.
Anna May Wong’s most Oscar worthy turn came seven years before the supporting awards were initiated. She’s mesmerizing in the British silent “Piccadilly”(1929), one of the best things in an excellent film. And it’s available in high-quality DVD.
Bollywood megastars Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra (who’s already broken ground by toplining a U.S. TV series , “Quantico) have just made their American films debuts.
Both are doing it in numb-skull action comedies" XXX –The Return of Xander Cage" for Deepika, the upcoming Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron “Baywatch” for Priyanka. But at least both films are high profile likely to make plenty of money and introduce the two to a wider audience. Make no mistake, though Deepika and Priyanka are undeniably gorgeous, they also have serious acting talent. Certainly each has what it takes to figure in Oscar conversations to come. Both have a decade or more of sustained Bollywood stardom behind them. And though most Bollywood films aren’t seen outside the Indian diaspora (and seldom if ever make the Academy’s eligibility list), there are plenty worth seeing. Case in point: 2015’s lush and stirring historical spectacle, “Bajirao Mastani”, in which Deepika and Priyanka co-starred to great effect, each winning piles of awards for their work. Had North American fans seen it, I think both ladies would already be well on their way to major Hollywood stardom.
And – of course – what about the magnificent stars from Japan’s golden age of film – Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Ayako Wakao,Takashi Shimura, Setsuko Hara, Kinuyo Tanaka,Tatsuya Nakadai ? All major figures in the history of world cinema – and not an Oscar nomination among them.
Oh my lord, Dev Patel, hair envy, body envy, boyfriend envy. I (6 vodkas in) bawled all the way through the last half of Lion. He is my favourite nominee this year (I haven't seen a bunch - Moonlight hasn't opened in UK and Amy got snubbed!). Gong Li is so great #teamhatsumomo
I've been harping on this topic for a while. Thanks for writing about it. There's more to diversity than simply black and white. Asian actors are underrepresented. Native American or other native populations almost completely lack recognition recognition. Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) would be the most recent, as she is half Maori. Before that, only Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves) and Dan George (Little Big Man) have been Oscar nominated. Lily Gladstone (Certain Women) would have been a fantastic addition to that tiny list.
The only thing I really remember about "Crouching Tiger" (really not my kind of movie) was Michelle Yoeh's performance, and how it was a defininte snub that year. She should have been in in stead of Judi Dench for "Chocolat"
Did the Academy build a Wall against Latino actors? Why don't theychange the rules and mandate that the 5 slots in each category must go to single ethnic group, so anybody can be happy?
@TOM Diversity and lack thereof is a real problem. Go away.
One thing I do want to say is I get a bit frustrated when people say "it's more than just black and white !!!" It has this undertone to me of belittling the black struggle--not saying that's peoples intention, but that's how it reads sometimes. I think one reason people focus so much on the lack of diversity in terms of black v white is because African Americans make up the largest minority community in the US, the country was literally built by them/on their backs, and a lot of people probably feel like if we can't even address that disparity and gain equality there, it's almost impossible anywhere else. It feels the most accessible.
With all that said, yes all diversity is important. Asians and native americans are definitely the most underrepresented ethnic groups. And outside of that, handicapped folks don't get their own spotlight either. Trans folks only recently started to be represented more accurately.
As much as Gong Li wasn't as great as she usually is in Memoirs of the Geisha, that snub hurt cuz she definitely missed out by a very small margin and it was exciting to see an Asian actress get that close.
Things like Fresh off the Boat and Master of None are certainly helping (TV is moving forward much faster than film, naturally, as there's less of a "risk" there I guess and TV is booming), but native americans are still waiting for their turn...which is sad considering America is their country. But we know how that went.
Tom ... just no. lol. Bye. You said some ignorant stuff the other day too. This really isn't the blog for that. Sorry.
I hope sometime soon the Oscars will start to nominate Asian actresses like how they started to nominate European legends a few years back including this year
Born and raised here in Asia, I can tell you there are MANY actors/actresses beyond the usual suspects involving Gong Li, Mieko and Maggie who deserve international accolades of one form or another. Just too many to name. They have given us mesmerising performances all throughout their years of acting - Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, China, Thailand, Singapore, etc. It's a shame that many of these movies have never been shown in other parts of the world.
@ Philip H
Yes to everything you said.
If I'm not mistaken im pretty sure Hispanics have outgrown black people in population but a big reason why the diversity conversation is always centered around black people is because they, especially black women, are the most vocal about injustices.
Jordan - Please don't be gross and make racist comments about huge portions of the population. K thanks.
When will people learn Hispanic is not a race.
I thought Maggie Cheung was amazing in In the Mood for Love and especially Hero where her grieving Flying Snow was the beating heart of the film.
So many under-the-radar actresses in the Asia-Pacific region deserving of wider acclaim for their cinematic outputs in rarely-seen movies: Indonesian actress Christine Hakim, incandescent in Whispering Sands, China-born actress Josephine Siao, unaffected and hilarious in Summer Snow, Filipina actress Nora Aunor, silently expressive in Thy Womb, among others.
Wish Maggie Cheung comes out of retirement and do a film with Gong Li.
I LOVED Chung in Hero. So great.
gong li really should have been nominated by now. all those fantastic, thunderously brilliant films she did in the nineties. i wish they were made post woke-america, she'd have been as nominated as marion cotillard.