why is old Zero white and young zero indian????

Oh, really? Wow. I'm surprised. Guess my assumptions weren't too accurate. I was just a bit confused for much of the film because I really, really did not think that Abraham looked like an older Zero.

"People's skin lightens as they age"
Well, no, quite the opposite, people skin get darker as we age.

Of course they're playing their respective roles. Obviously no one is questioning that.

The question is, "Why did they cast actors who look so different?"

DJ Qualls is playing Mike Tyson in the upcomming movie "Tyson", not a problem as it is acting, right?

considering that the op, along with myself, along with many others in the world, may have asked themselves that question at least once. so the confusion does make it feel to some that it was a poor choice. why don't you explain to us why it was the right choice then?

How was he wrong? Why? Because you say so? Pfft, okay. It's film, a great one at that, meant to be an escape. What do you think your trying to prove? That you're an idiot? Well darling, you have emphatically succeeded.

You are either lying or completely ignorant. During a court case against MJ, the prosecution hired a doctor to go through his medical files, this was the prosecutors doctor and witness against MJ and he testified in court that MJ had both vitiligo and lupus and had been dealing with that through the decades. Even the Lupus and vitiligo society will testify to this.

Fact is fact, lie all you want.

Exactly. The casting was not accidental and not a mistake. It was done for exactly this reason. To cast doubt in the viewers mind as to the actual identity of the older "Zero". Of course the difference in appearance and the age discrepancy are immediately noticeable to any viewer, but my reaction was not why was the casting done poorly (because it is so obvious it was intentional) but what does this mean in the context of the film. Like sfwmson my first thought was that they were not in fact the same person. The older teller was telling his story through the artificial device of a third party. In fact that is exactly how the film starts through 2 layers. First the girl reading the book as recited by the older Jude Law, then the older Law recounting his past and its effects on his writing ("there is no fiction, only stories told to you that you take"), then the older "zero" recounting his story to the young Law. Many layers of biography ultimately told by a novelist, ultimately told by a screenwriter. At what level of the story is the real past changed to make a better story? This is a major theme in the film, and it is no accident that the truth and identity of the central story teller should be put into question in such a visual way.