Sarah Silverman once called non-Jewish actors playing Jewish roles—“and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being”—“Jewface.” The term is disturbingly applicable to some of 2023’s films, particularly because actors like Bradley Cooper and Helen Mirren employed prosthetics to more closely resemble the Jewish figures they portray in Maestro and Golda respectively. For Mirren’s part, she understands the issue, but she doesn’t quite agree with it.
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While she’s played other Jewish roles, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was the most “uber-Jewish role” she’s had. “I did tell [director] Guy [Nattiv] that I’m not Jewish, in case he thought I was,” she said to Radio Times. She told Nattiv, “‘If that’s an issue, I’ll step away, no problem.’ But he said, ‘No, it’s not an issue. I want you to play Golda.’ And off we went.”
In another interview on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg (via Page Six), Mirren opined that “The whole issue of casting has exploded out of the water fairly recently.” She asserted that all people are “such an amazing mix” (of ethnicities, presumably) that it shouldn’t be an issue at all. “Certainly I don’t have an issue with Kirk Douglas playing a Viking,” she said, pulling an example from 1958 of a Jewish actor playing a non-Jewish role.
“I think the whole question of assuming a certain physiognomy because you’re playing a particular race, there is something offensive about that,” said Mirren, who was made up in prosthetics to play Meir. “On the other hand, if you’re playing Leonard Bernstein and this is really what Leonard Bernstein looked like, you know, maybe it’s a good idea.” (Bernstein’s family released a statement of approval for Cooper’s prosthetics in Maestro.) “As I say, it’s a very delicate balance,” Mirren said.
Playing Meir is controversial in other ways, with some critics denouncing the glorification of a notoriously anti-Palestinian figure. Mirren distanced herself from that aspect of Meir’s history, telling Kuenssberg, “All I’m doing is playing Golda during the period of the Yom Kippur War. I’m not explaining her or rationalizing her or reappraising her. I’m just playing a woman of that age dealing with that situation.” Nevertheless, she praised Meir’s leadership, saying her rise to power “was an incredibly important moment in female history, for me personally, to see that happen.”