Italian actors not famous enough to play ‘Ferrari’ boss, says producer in casting row

The Hollywood producer of the new Ferrari film has defended casting an American actor to play the protagonist, saying that Italian cinema has failed to create enough international stars for the high-profile role.

Andrea Iervolino said that the lack of Italian stars for the $90 million movie meant that US actor Adam Driver, who was also recently cast as Maurizio Gucci, was entitled to play Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the eponymous sports car company.

Iervolino, who is Canadian-Italian, was responding to claims at the Venice Film Festival that the American casting was a form of “cultural appropriation” in the latest row over who can play who in major blockbusters.

The row debate, follows accusations of ‘Jewface’ laid at Bradley Cooper for his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein in the new film Maestro.

Controversy over Ferrari was sparked by Pierfrancesco Favino, one of the biggest names in Italian film, who stars in a new movie called Comandante, about the captain of an Italian submarine in the Second World War, which opened this year’s festival in Venice.

“There’s an issue of cultural appropriation,” Favino said. He said it was hard to understand why actors of the calibre of Toni Servillo, who starred in the international hit The Great Beauty, were not cast more often in Hollywood films.

“Instead, the parts are given to foreign actors who are distant from the story’s real protagonists, starting with the exotic accents. If a Cuban can’t play a Mexican, why can an American play an Italian? It only happens with us. In another time (Vittorio) Gassman would have played Ferrari. Now, Driver does it and no one says anything.” He accused Hollywood of showing “an attitude of contempt towards the Italian system”.

Iervolino hit back, saying Italy had failed where other countries had succeeded in producing Hollywood stars, pointing to the examples of Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz from Spain, Mads Mikkelsen from Denmark, and Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel from France.

He said Italian actors needed much greater visibility at the international level in “order to play the lead roles in films that cost around $100 million to make, such as Ferrari.”

‘Italian cinema needs to look beyond Italy’

“Italian cinema needs to look beyond Italy and come up with synergies with the international film industry, which wants to invest in Italian icons. Films like Ferrari, which will be distributed in 150 countries, promote Italy and Italian genius.”

He said that to win a higher profile, the Italian film sector needs to “make films based on stories that speak to the whole world, with international stars who work side by side with our own talent”.

His criticism comes amid a wider debate about whether it is appropriate for actors of one ethnicity to portray characters of another ethnicity.

There was controversy when Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, played Golda Meir, Israel’s only woman prime minister, who governed from 1969-1974.

The actress and comedian Sarah Silverman argues that it is inappropriate for non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters in films and televisions, calling it ‘Jewface’ – a play on the concept of ‘blackface’.

‘Jewface’ controversy

Bradley Cooper was recently embroiled in a ‘Jewface’ controversy for wearing a prosthetic nose in his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein in the new film Maestro, although he received unwavering support from Mr Bernstein’s family.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in what was a golden age for Italian cinema, the likes of Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Gina Lollobrigida broke into Hollywood and starred in a slew of big-budget blockbusters.

Those days are a distant memory – few Italian actors are well known internationally.

One exception is Monica Belluci, who appeared in the Bond film Spectre with Daniel Craig. And the second series of the HBO production White Lotus, a black comedy set in Sicily, made stars of three Italian actresses who played the roles of the manager of a fictional luxury hotel and two young call-girls who tout for business among its wealthy clients.

At the Venice Film Festival, Favino also criticised another recent film, Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, in which Driver played Maurizio Gucci, scion of the fashion dynasty, and Lady Gaga played his wife, who plotted to have him murdered.

Favino mocked the Italian accents adopted by the American stars. “Didn’t you know that the Guccis had a New Jersey accent?” he joked.

Pupi Avati, an Italian director, said he agreed that Italian actors should play Italian roles. “He’s right. Given that the Americans often make films about Italy, it makes sense that the parts should be played by Italians.” Having Enzo Ferrari, who was from Modena in northern Italy, played by Driver, an actor from the US, “was a bit of a joke”, he said.

Monica Guerritore, a prominent actress, said that some roles were so culturally Italian, including Enzo Ferrari, that they had to be played by an Italian.

But Favino’s criticism was dismissed by others in the film industry, who said there was a long tradition of Americans portraying Italians, from Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather to John Malkovich as Casanova in Casanova Variations.

Iervolino said that model was successful decades ago, pointing to the example of Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon starring in the 1963 film The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), a film based on a famous novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa which chronicled the dramatic changes in Sicilian life during Italy’s struggle for independence and unification in the 19th century.