Hollywood Whitewashing: 16 Times White Actors Played Minority Characters

6. Ben Affleck in Argo

The character that Ben Affleck played in his Oscar winning 2012 film Argo was based on a real life person, Tony Mendez, who is of Mexican heritage on his paternal side. Many people were up in arms that Irish descendant Affleck took on the Hispanic role. However, the real Mendez says that he never identified as a Hispanic person. He’s Italian, Irish and French on his mother’s side and originally Mexican on his father’s side, but so many generations ago that nobody knows where exactly where in Mexico they hail from. Nobody in his family spoke Spanish (he only learned it as a second language when he joined the CIA). So in this case, was it really necessary to find a Latino actor when the real guy himself feels all-American?