Do they really want the part? Oder anders: Wie spiele ich einen Terroristen? Interessanter Artikel aus der LA Times über die Schwierigkeiten arabischstämmiger Schauspieler:

When writer-director Stephen Gaghan was casting Syriana, his ensemble drama about the political and personal costs of America’s dependence on foreign oil, he struggled to find a young actor of Pakistani descent to play a suicide bomber. He held casting sessions in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Damascus, Bahrain, Dubai and Karachi without success before he finally found Mazhar Munir in London.

“I had found a couple of terrific young actors who simply weren’t allowed by their families to take the part,” Gaghan said. “One young man’s family said he would be cut out of the family” if he accepted the role.

When actors of Middle Eastern descent are cast in lead roles, something as seemingly benign as a movie premiere can turn into a diplomatic dilemma. Iraq-born actor Lewis Alsamari, who plays hijacker Saeed Al Ghamdi in United 93, left Baghdad for the United Kingdom a decade ago, but the United States denied the actor’s visa request to attend Tuesday’s premiere of the film at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The producers of these films also risk bringing real-world politics onto their movie sets. An actor who starred as a Palestinian suicide bomber in Paradise Now described the emotional complexity of playing a bomber inside a bus full of Israeli actors, while his costar told of filming an equally troubling scene in front of the residents of a West Bank city.

The atmosphere between Arabs and Jews during the filming of the Olympic hostage drama Munich was emotionally charged. And one American performer who played a passenger on United 93 said that for a period of time during production he could not treat the four terrorist actors “as human beings.”