So what you’re saying is sub-consciously Angie wants to be a black woman?

This isn’t a movie about an actual person. Shouldn’t any actress be able to portray the character?

As for the “A Mighty Heart” role, why blame AJ? The producers made the casting decision. (Of course, she may have also produced the movie. I didn’t care enough to check into it.)

BTW, I think Halle Berry is playing a white woman in an upcoming movie about a Nevada school teacher.

i promised i would leave this alone, but yeah, manifoldstore, her man owned the rights to the movie. so that particular casting decision was pretty much made on the couch. funny enough, something that doesn’t often come up in AJ’s interviews about “A Might Heart” is that (pre-brangelina days) it was actually jennifer aniston who bought the rights to “a mighty heart” for Plan B (she and brad’s production company). JA was the one who met with marianne pearl (hopefully she would have had the good sense not to play the woman) and encouraged both her and asra nomani (daniel pearl’s colleague) to sell the rights to their story. brad pitt just happened to get Plan B in the divorce, shut out the ex-wife and brought in his shiny new girlfriend to play the part. Read about it here if you want. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062201673.html. i know this comment has nothing to do with race, but she just bugs me and i hate the way she walks around like it was divined for her to play this part and, that as such, there was no reason for the producers to audition anyone else. bottom line even if marianne pearl were a white woman, it was in bad taste for her to take that part.

“This isn’t a movie about an actual person. Shouldn’t any actress be able to portray the character?”

Good point, manifold.

Halle Berry has had several roles that were written for white women.

Regarding “A Mighty Heart,” Mariane ASKED her to play the character which frankly I can blame her for since Jennifer Aniston was going to get the role. The production company owned by Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and some other hollywood young bloods (relatively speaking) made the movie. I’m going to guess Ms. Angie didn’t get paid for that role. You can’t charge your man.

daria–almost all roles in hollywood are written for white women, so yeah, i guess you’re right. but you’re wrong about marianne asking angelina to play the role. brad asked her to be in the movie, not marianne. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20042988,00.html

i don’t mean to sound snappy daria; can you tell angelina jolie bugs me? LOL. co-workers, friends, and strangers on the street all hear from me constantly on said subject.

tigerr1978, that contradicts a statement that mariane made in a magazine article. Glamour I think it is.

At this point, I’m a fan of every actress who isn’t flashing her cooch in front of Chateau Marmont. It’s sad but true.

I don’t think there are many good roles for women in general in Hollywood. In the last year, I think every rich role played by a woman got an Oscar or BAFTA nomination. Hell, Halle and Angelina who are probably top 5 A-list actresses, and top 3 for their age, can’t even get good roles. I see why Angelina would play the role even though she was aware that it would raise eyebrows. Let’s review their post-Oscar work:
Angelina: dying newscaster (very poorly written), mother of actor who is her age, one-dimensional miserable burden of a woman and voice of sexed up fish.
Halle: got Oscar for a role that was rich though negative, cat woman, murderer/investigator in poorly done Perfect Stranger
The only actress who seems to consistently get good roles is Hillary Swank which is probably why she has that second Oscar.

It seems as if you’re not white and not a man, you have to make opportunities for yourself.

Marianne Pearl is the one who personally asked that Angelina Jolie play her in the movie. Not Brad or Angie.

You guys can go with that one. Of course Marianne back-tracks to say she asked Angelina to portray her. But the proof is in the pudding: how could she have asked AJ to play her when the rights to her story were bought when Jennifer and Brad were still married and AJ was nowhere on the horizon?

And okay, Halle has played “white” roles before(what were they again? Oh yeah, just two: the Flinstone’s movie[which was a made up character anyways!] and that teacher[which I feel is stupid because I’m sure there are black women who’ve made a difference in their students lives instead of just white people]), but look at the firestorm that was raised with the casting of both Jessica Alba and Kerry Washington in the Fantastic Four films. No one told those comic book geeks to get over it, or stop pulling the “race card”–even when Halle was announced to play Catwoman, people had to remind everyone that Eartha Kitt played Catwoman on TV because the majority of people only remember Michelle Pfieffer and the white cartoon characters.

I’d be more annoyed with this new development if I wasn’t aware that the screenwriters practically raped the storyline and turned it into something completely different from the graphic novels. I just wonder what dear old Angie will tell her children when they realize that the color of their skin–due to this f’ed up society–has the potential to separate them from their parents.

1. Mariane van Neyenhoff Pearl is multiracial: half Dutch-Jewish, three eighths Afro-Latino-Cuban and one eighth Chinese Cuban. By some people’s rationale, you should get someone with her exact make-up to play the role. Others just say black. Some say a black Latina or a multiracial French woman. I’m sure some french people are annoyed that someone is faking their accent just as some latinos maybe annoyed that it isn’t a latina playing her (and even if it were, she’d have to be cuban or the cubans would be pissed).
She doesn’t consider herself black alone. She considers herself multiracial. Believe it or not, that concept is the best way to avoid a myriad of racial-identity issues, particularly in areas that are diverse and racially integrated.
2. She was born and raised in France. If you are at all familiar with her work, she has a strong consciousness about her various countries of origins. She spent most of her formative years in Paris, a city in which the bulk of supposed racism is essentially Islamaphobia and anti-Algerian sentiments. As we have discussed several time, people’s sense of race and sensitivity on the topic is based on their own background.
3. I have never once heard of anyone complaining about the casting of Rosario and Jessica in F4. Maybe I don’t know any comic book geeks and I don’t read their blogs, but the general public (probably 99% of the people who saw the movie) applauded the casting because those are two gorgeous women.
4. Similarly, I’ve never heard of anyone criticizing the casting of Halle Berry. Eartha Kitt has a strong association with that character, far more than Michelle Pfeiffer.

I can respect the differences in opinion on this issue though at the same time, I think this discussion blinds people to the underlying issue.

The whole concept that it’s black face is lost on me. She’s been pasty in the last few years and it looks like they made her spend 5 minutes in the sun. She’s been tanner and not in movie roles. They made her wear a wig? Okay. The only person I can see playing this role with their natural hair is Rhea Pearlman from Cheers.

The point that is lost in this whole discussion is that there aren’t enough good roles for black women and we can add Asian women to the list as they can’t “pass” as white like say white or lighter-skinned latinas. People get soundbytes. The current one is “black people are mad that Angelina Jolie is playing Mariane Pearl.” What it should be is “there aren’t enough role for black women in hollywood and we’re going to do x, y and z to change that.”

Halle is playing a white woman without having her natural appearance altered at all. This isn’t like say Rosario Dawson being lightened up with make up and given blue contacts and blond hair. She isn’t “passing” at all. That’s quite a stride. There is no uproar nor are there complaints. Considering the context, I would only take issue with it if Mariane Pearl did.

In my view, Mariane Pearl is a great activist-writer-global citizen and a great person. I particularly likes that she’s made several million American women aware of the world outside of theirs with her series which led to my subscribing to Glamour. Her work is informative yet accessible.

Also, Angelina Jolie is a great actress-humanitarian-businesswoman-producer. I’ve been entirely convinced of this after watching her documentary. It doesn’t seem as if she is “race blind” which is a concept I use to describe the parents of adopt kids who are another race and pretend to live in a bubble though the kid is of course going to experience discrimination (for which they are then unprepared to face) and want a connection to their heritage, not just that of their parents. She seems to make a very conscious effort. No matter how aware she is, she’s never going to have the same thoughts on this as you will. Her controversial statement about adopting another Asian kid so that there is someone at home who looks at least a bit like you is spot on. Talk to kids whose parents are of other races, especially when there are also biological kids in the picture as well. If you want to see someone with racial-identity issues, go talk to Asian-American girl adopted by white baby-boomer parents who are race-blind. The ones I know have many issues with their appearance. In reference to her kids, the color that will most impact their lives is green.

I’m done procrastinating now.