Over the past few years, cross-cultural prestige pics like "Letters From Iwo Jima," "The Visitor," "Lost in Translation," "Munich," "Babel," "City of God" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" have all attracted significant awards attention, though Oscar nominations for the non-American thesps therein have been almost entirely absent (with "Babel" as the exception that highlights the rule). And nowhere is that disparity more obvious than with regard to East Asian and Indian actors.Consider last year's underdog hit, Slumdog Millionaire -- not necessarily an authentic 'Asian' film, but you get the idea. It was showered with awards, winning eight out of ten nominations in every conceivable category... except for the acting ones. The same is true for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which earned nominations in nearly every category except the acting ones.
While Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) and Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) earned supporting nominations this decade, one has to go back to Haing S. Ngor's supporing actor trophy in 1985 to find a nominated Asian actor. Ngor and Miyoshi Umeki (who won for 1957's Sayonara) are the only two Asians to actually win an acting award.
Anyway, for an avid Oscar-watcher like me, the article expresses a lot of the things I've observed when it comes to Asians and the Academy Awards. While Africans Americans have taken big leaps at the Oscars in recent years (I do take issue with the article's suggestion that race, for black actors, has become a nonissue), it's obvious that Asian actors still have a considerably long way to go.