Portrayal of East Asians in American film and theater

"[11] The 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians starred Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Harry Shum Jr., Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi, and Carmen Soo, among others.

The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once starred Michelle Yeoh as main lead, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Harry Shum Jr., and James Hong as supporting actors.

The Welsh American Myrna Loy was the "go-to girl" for any portrayal of Asian characters and was typecast in over a dozen films, while Chinese detective Charlie Chan, who was modeled after Chang Apana, a real-life Chinese Hawaiian detective, was portrayed by several European and European American actors including Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Peter Ustinov.

The list of actors who have donned yellowface to portray East Asians at some point in their career includes Lon Chaney Sr., Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Loretta Young, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Anthony Quinn, Shirley MacLaine, Katharine Hepburn, Rita Moreno, Rex Harrison, John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, Marlon Brando, Lupe Vélez, Alec Guinness, Tony Randall, John Gielgud, Max von Sydow, Linda Hunt, Eddie Murphy, David Carradine, Joel Grey, Peter Sellers, Yul Brynner, and many others.

[14] All the versions of Madame Butterfly tell the story of a young Japanese woman who has converted to Christianity (for which she is disowned by her family) and marries Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a white lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.

Pinkerton eventually meets and marries a white American woman (the fact he stopped paying the rent on Butterfly's house amounted to a divorce under Japanese law at the time).

Cheekbones and lips were built up with cotton and collodion, the ends of cigar holders were inserted into his nostrils, and the long fingernails were constructed from stripes of painted film stock.

The plot concerns the concept of the United States military government trying to establish power and influence over Japan, specifically in Okinawa, during wartime.

Better Luck Tomorrow introduced film audiences to a cast including Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan and John Cho.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is a 2004 American buddy stoner comedy film directed by Danny Leiner, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and starring John Cho and Kal Penn.

Why don’t we do it with a white guy and a black dude?”[19] John Cho mentioned the writers wanted to avoid whitewashing the main leads, so they wrote ethnic specific scenes in the script.

It was a totally different world.”[19] Kal Penn stated that the reason the movie was green-lit was because there were two junior execs at New Line Cinema who were given this new project and decided to take a chance on it.

[27][28][29] Lead actress Constance Wu responded to criticisms, stating that the film would not represent every Asian American given that the majority of characters depicted in the movie were ethnically Chinese and extremely wealthy.

[33] Of the film, Han stated that she had to turn down initial offers to adapt the book, as some of the studios wanted a white actress to play the main character of Lara Jean.

The Cyrano de Bergerac spin-off is about Ellie Chu, a shy, introverted student helps the school jock woo a girl whom, secretly, they both want.

Starring Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Tony Leung as Wenwu, the film is Marvel's first superhero movie tentpole franchise with an Asian protagonist.

Starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Harry Shum Jr., among other actors, it is an absurdist action-comedy film where an aging Chinese-American immigrant must save the world by exploring other universes and reliving the lives she could have led.

[49] Warner Brothers Television initially intended to cast Henry Higgs as a white Englishman who was several generations older modeling after the original character.

The creator, Emily Kapnek said, "We looked at tons of different actors, and really once we kind of opened our minds and said let’s get off of what we think Henry is supposed to be and just talk about who is, we just need a brilliant actor—and John [Cho]’s name came up."

[63] The film's tone has long been considered racist and offensive,[64][65] but that only added to its cult status alongside its humor and Grand Guignol sets and torture sequences.

Although Pearl Buck intended the film to be cast with all Chinese or Chinese-American actors, the studio opted to use established American stars, tapping Europeans Paul Muni and Luise Rainer for the lead roles.

[69] The Good Earth was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Direction (Sidney Franklin), Best Cinematography (Karl Freund), and Best Film Editing (Basil Wrangell).

[76] Long Duk Dong displayed a variety of stereotypes in the film such being socially awkward and difficult to understand, and the "lecherous but sexually inept loser".

Yellowface in theatre has been called "the practice of white actors donning overdone face paint and costumes that serves as a caricatured representation of traditional Asian garb.

Miss Saigon tells the story of a doomed romance involving a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier set in the time of the Vietnam War.

[79] When Miss Saigon premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on September 20, 1989, Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce wore heavy prosthetic eyelids and skin-darkening cream in playing The Engineer, a mixed-race French-Vietnamese pimp.

[86] In 2015, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players cancelled a production of The Mikado that was set to feature their repertory company of mostly White actors, due to complaints from the East Asian-American community.

It is based on an old traditional Chinese folktale about a young girl, Hua Mulan, who disguises as a man to take her father's spot in the army.

The plot concerns a story about a Chinese Canadian mother who creates a baby dumpling that comes to life to help her cope with the loneliness and grief in missing her son who has grown up.

[98] A prominent example of the whitewashing of Asian roles is the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, in which the leading character—a Chinese monk and martial arts master who fled China after having accidentally slain the emperor's nephew—is portrayed by European-American actor David Carradine.