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Autistic actors

Expecto_Patronum

I'm sure this topic will have come up before but I'm intrigued as to people's thoughts. It's something I see debated online a lot.

Some people are arguing that only autistic people should play autistic characters and as much as I can see where they are coming from, I have to disagree. The whole point of acting is to play someone that you're not. People will argue that a neurotypical person cannot know what it is like to be autistic. I'm sure the ones that play serial killers don't have any experience of that either but they do a perfectly good job.

Now I do think autistic people should be involved with the production of something with an autistic character. But I actually think the most important part is the writing of the character - that is whole different topic and I'm aware there are some poor portrayals of autistic characters out there but is that because of the actor or the character they've been given to play.

My concern of going down the route of it has to be an autistic person that plays this character is that you end up with type casting. 1. Autistic actors are likely to end up only ever being given autistic roles (they may be happy with that but it sounds restrictive in the world of acting) and by the same argument they have no idea what it's like to be NT so how could they play an NT character. 2. I know what it's like to be me. I don't know what it's like to be any other autistic person particularly those in different areas of the spectrum to me so by that logic, I can only play a character who has my autistic traits which basically means the part has to be written for me.

I'm aware others may not agree with me on this but it's one of those things that seems very logical to me and it baffles me a little bit that people feel so strongly the other way (I guess this is one of the reasons I have an autism diagnosis).

Parents

  • At present there is a definite ban on European-descended actors playing any part that is intended to be of any other ethnicity. The opposite is the case for actors from other ethnicities, who are entirely free to play parts that are traditionally thought to be for people of European descent. This seems fundamentally unfair to me. If it were retrospective, then Laurence Olivier's portrayal of Othello would be disallowed. Othello has now become the sole preserve of people of Sub-Saharan ancestry, even though Othello is called a 'Moor', and therefore North African. I think that it would be better for actors to be chosen purely on their merit as actors and not on their ethnic background, or disabled status for that matter.

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  • At present there is a definite ban on European-descended actors playing any part that is intended to be of any other ethnicity. The opposite is the case for actors from other ethnicities, who are entirely free to play parts that are traditionally thought to be for people of European descent. This seems fundamentally unfair to me. If it were retrospective, then Laurence Olivier's portrayal of Othello would be disallowed. Othello has now become the sole preserve of people of Sub-Saharan ancestry, even though Othello is called a 'Moor', and therefore North African. I think that it would be better for actors to be chosen purely on their merit as actors and not on their ethnic background, or disabled status for that matter.

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