Actor and director Bradley Cooper finds himself at the centre of a “Jewface” controversy over his use of makeup in his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming Netflix bio-drama Maestro.
Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in Maestro. Photo © Netflix
After Netflix released the first trailer Maestro earlier this week, some viewers took to social media to criticise Cooper’s prosthetic nose, describing it as it yet another example of Hollywood’s inauthentic portrayal of Jewish people.
In a post on the X platform (formerly Twitter), @StopAntisemitism wrote:
“Hollywood cast Bradley Cooper – a non Jew – to play Jewish legend Leonard Bernstein and stuck a disgusting exaggerated ‘Jew nose’ on him. All while saying no to Jake Gyllenhaal, an actually Jewish man, who has dreamt of playing Bernstein for decades. Sickening.”
The post generated a storm of online comments #JewFace.
“Why is Bradley Cooper playing Bernstein?” wrote the far-right activist-blogger Pamela Geller. “He’s not Jewish – now a standard rule in Hollywood for other ethnicities & he is not nearly as handsome as Bernstein.”
Others were ambivalent. “This isn’t what we should be hanging our hats on,” wrote one respondent. “This doesn’t matter....
We’re so easily offended today, aren’t we? And can’t wait to say so on the socials. Acting usually means playing someone you’re not, like the many Jewish actors who have played non-Jewish characters, from the birth of cinema to this week: Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, John Garfield, Kirk Douglas (how many Westerns must have he have been in? As a child, his family spoke Yiddish at home), Jack Black, Natalie Portman, Zac Efron, Scarlett Johannson, Jake Gyllenhaal and hundreds of others.
How many accents has Meryl Streep used in her movies? And is she all those nationalities? How about Helen Mirren playing Maria Altmann in Woman in Gold (2015)? Let’s find that offensive too. Not to mention the non-Jewish Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire (1981).