They couldn't find an Italian American to play the lead?

need a white LEAD, for funding in this white world.
British actors are making a huge invasion now into hollywood.
many of the leads are going to brits playing americans, ironic isnt it.
you dont see many americans playing brits though

Stallone would have been perfect for the lead.

I know, I wanted to see Michael Cera too

It's so common to see non American actors playing Americans and vice versa that I suspect they do it on purpose to create "buzz", just like this thread. They no doubt want to give people one more motivation to see the movie, in this case to see if actor XYZ can "really pull it off", and then to talk about how convincing or UNconvincing their performance was. It's not a new thing in the entertainment industry. The casting of Brits in Gone With The Wind created quite a bit of media chatter and "controversy" in 1938/39, and some people went to see it at least partly for that reason.

I am an Italian-American myself, and I feel just insulted. They didn't even bother to shoot this movie in Saipan or Japan.

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Meh; Jack O'Connell deserved a break... Arnie would be screwed if there was some sort of rule that you could only play your own nationality - and I didn't see many people complaining that he was Austrian, in his 80's heyday!

Acting is about changing who you are - including perhaps your accent - so it should just be about who conveys the essence of the character best.







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"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

Actually, I think that Hollywood film producers will select Tom Hanks, Alan Alda's successor as Hollywood's Number One Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes to portray the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King on screen.

I mean, if a nice liberal actor/comedian like Billy Crystal can portray the late, lamented Sammy Davis, Jr. on SNL, why can't a bona fide Lexus liberal/ President Barack H. Obama sycophant like Tom "Bosom Buddies" Hanks portray Dr. King?

PS If "Unbroken" had been an NBC television movie, the "savants" at that network would have probably cast the "immortal" Richard Grieco or, possibly Mark "Mr. Kelly Ripa" Consuelos (who is actually half Italian-American, I believe) in the role of the truly great and remarkable Mr. Louis Zamperini.