Culture
13:50, 01-Sep-2017
Actress brands Hollywood ‘racist’ after name change from Wang leads to more roles
["north america"]
Share
Copied
Actress Chloe Bennet has blasted Hollywood as “racist” after changing her surname from Wang led to more film and television roles.
Bennet, who has an American mother and Chinese father, chose to drop her original surname Wang after finding it tough to land jobs.
She took her father’s Christian name Bennet as her stage name which resulted almost immediately in a change of fortunes.
Bennet took her father's Christian name as her stage name. /AFP Photo
Bennet took her father's Christian name as her stage name. /AFP Photo
"The first audition I went on after I changed my name, I got booked," Bennet told The Daily Beast in 2016.
"So that's a pretty clear little snippet of how Hollywood works," she said.
When an Instagram follower asked why she had changed her name, Bennet said, “Hollywood is racist and wouldn't cast me with a last name that made them uncomfortable.”
But she also defended the move, saying the decision had been taken purely for the sake of her career and was not a denial of her Chinese heritage.
Bennet said her decision was purely taken for professional reasons and was not a denial of her Asian heritage. /CGTN screenshot
Bennet said her decision was purely taken for professional reasons and was not a denial of her Asian heritage. /CGTN screenshot
"Changing my last name doesn't change the fact that my BLOOD is half Chinese, that I lived in China, speak Mandarin or that I was culturally raised both American and Chinese... It means I had to pay my rent," he posted on Instagram.
Bennet, who stars in hit TV series “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD”, has since created RUN (Represent Us Now), a group which campaigns for better representation of Asian American and Pacific Island communities in Hollywood.
Bennet defended Skrein's decision to withdraw from "Hellboy" after discovering he had been cast as an Asian character. /CGTN screenshot
Bennet defended Skrein's decision to withdraw from "Hellboy" after discovering he had been cast as an Asian character. /CGTN screenshot
Her comments online come after British actor Ed Skrein recently pulled out of the movie “Hellboy” after discovering he had been cast to play an Asian character.
Bennet praised Skrein’s decision, posting online, “DAMN, that's a man. Thank you @edskrein for standing up against Hollywood's continuous insensitivity and flippant behaviour towards the Asian American community.”
10073km