daniel henney is a great actor.

an actor takes on a role and makes it his own..
thats exactly what he does!
he always adds his style into his roles.

However, Bad acting, good acting, Asian, half Asian, half White, does it really matter. I am extremely proud of the class act that is Daniel Henney. Before we jump down his throat regarding his acting skills, let’s first remember that he started as a model. It’s a new endeavor for him and maybe he lacks the natural, inherent skills of a Mr. Brando. However, are most of us excellent at what we want to do from the start? I see continued improvements in his acting from Kim Sam Soon , Mr. Perfect and now to Wolverine. Yes, none of his performances were Oscar worthy but so what? It’s a good thing that a kind, decent person like Daniel is representing the Asian Americans, not to mention extremely sexy and good looking. Can we just be happy for him and wish him much success? Hollywood is hard enough without us tearing him apart. I hope that we can all stand behind him and other Asian American actors/actresses and support them through their successes and failures.

In fact, during the past few years of shows during Fashion Week in NYC, there were about DOUBLE the nos. of AF models to black female models (in comparison to their % of the pop., AFs tend to be OVER-represented in the media).

I wouldn’t exactly consider Watanabe to be “mainstream Hollywood” – he’s pretty much regulated to “exotic” roles as a foreigner (pretty much Japanese roles).

What I and others are talking about is the dearth of portrayals of Asian-AMERICAN males (as just “regular” guys in American society).

Foreign actors like Watanabe, Jackie Chang, Jet Li, Chow Yan Fat, etc. just reinforce the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype and Asian-Americans don’t really relate to them (just as black Americans wouldn’t relate to the portrayal of blacks in the media if they were primarily of foreign blacks from Africa).

Heck, even Asian-American male actors have a tough time getting roles as Americans – most have ended up playing some foreign bad guy (enemy soldier, Asian gang member, martial artist, etc.).

The two most high profile roles which have gone to Asian-Am male actors consist of playing foreigners on “Lost” and
“Heroes” (both Daniel Dae Kim and Masi Oka had to endure Hollywood execs, producers, agents, etc. thinking that they were foreign actors and didn’t really speak English as they made the rounds of parties in LA; not that diff. from when director John Hughes thought that Gedde Watanabe was Japanese and didn’t speak English during the filming of “Sixteen Candles”).

And as for the whole Arabs are terrorists thing – while Hollywood has largely stopped doing that (in a no. of recent films, the bad guys were changed from Arab terrorists to a different type of bad guy) – keep in mind that the Arab terrorists were FOREIGNERS and that Asian males have been and continue to be portrayed as the “evil” foreigners.

Go back to all the films about WWII, the Korean War or Vietnam (or after Vietnam such as the Rambo films).

3 or 4 of the Bond films have Asians as the bad guys (even recent ones like “Die Another Day”), the Asian male abuses AFs until she is rescued by the WM hero has long been a staple (see films like “The Transporter”) and Hollywood is still making films set in the jungles of SE Asia where the “good guys” end up killing rows and rows of “little Asian men” (speaking of “little Asian men”; it’s hardly surprising that the Asian male character in “Ocean’s Eleven” was a tiny, 95 lb Chinese guy who could barely speak English).

“The Departed”, which was a remake of the HK film “Infernal Affairs” didn’t have any good guys Asian-Am male characters (there are AA male cops and FBI agents, you know) and yet, the film had the Chinese Triad gang members (w/ Jack Nicholson’s character making the requisite penis-size jokes).

What I and others are talking about are Asian-American male actors playing Asian Am male roles – foreign actors or foreigner roles do little to break the stereotypes and instead, actually reinforce a no. of them.

Grrreeeeeaaaaat….

After reading all the comments about how white women don’t find Asian men to be sexy…I FEEL LIKE SUCH A FREAK!!!!!!!

I’ve always found asian and Native American men to be extremely sexy.

Who knew no other white woman finds them sexy?!?!

Oh well, more for me!

;~D

Ken Watanabe! He’s pretty mainstream Hollywood and he is directly from Japan!

I can’t think of any Asian male supermodels though, but to be honest, I’m hard pressed to name any male models…they just don’t have the same high profiles as the women in general.

The ones that I know are Tyson Beckford (although he is claimed by African Americans, sort of like the way that Tiger Woods is also claimed by African Americns) and Brent Chua.

I don’t know any others who have the -American as part of their identity. Like, I’d like to say that Rojam was Chinese American, but I don’t think he spends any time in the US, and certainly, he’s nowhere to be found in American mainstream media.