Mrs. Guesswork and I are watching The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, starring the distinctly un-Arab-looking
Kerwin Mathews as
the Iraqi Sinbad. I got to thinking about who you typically see getting generic "swarthy guy" roles:
| Actor | Actual Ethnicity | Ethnicities Played |
| Art Malik | Pakistani | Indian (Booty Call), Arab (True Lies), Greek (Year of the Comet) |
| Tony Shalhoub | Lebanese | Lebanese (The Siege), Italian (Big Night) |
| Ricardo Montalban | Mexican | Hispanic (Spy Kids and others), Japanese (Sayonara), Indian (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) (thanks to Wikipedia) |
I'm not sure how much of an improvement this is over the days when you could have Charleton Heston playing a Mexican.
Don't forget Anthony Quinn as the other ubiquitous swarthy guy, and John Wayne as Ghengis Khan!
Or the neverending stream of European guys that played Charlie Chan. (Werner Oland was the main actor in the films.) Famed eco-actor Ed Begley Jr.'s father played him in the radio version.