Controversy: Downey In Blackface
Pictured: That black guy in the middle is a white guy…
With his afro hair and brown skin, he is virtually unrecognisable as the 42-year-old star of stage and screen.
Robert Downey Jr plays a worthy Oscar-winning actor taking on a role originally written for a black actor, and rather than re-write the part, he goes method.
Clearing anticipating a backlash, Downey Jr told a US magazine: “If it’s done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago. If you don’t do it right, we’re going to hell.”
But the backlash has clearly begun as one comment on a showbiz blog Just Jared said: “I’m not black and I find it offensive; are there not any talented enough black actors out in the world that they feel the need to hire a white guy to do a black guy?”
“They are infering that there are no good enough black actors to play a black person.
“What is the significance of hiring a white guy to play a black part? what are they trying to prove? I bet its to get more publicity.”
The film centres on a group of pompous actors making the most expensive Vietnam war movie ever made.
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[...] Remember we brought you the controversy stirred up when news of Robert Downey Jr. playing a black man broke… [...]