10 Most Controversial Movie Castings of All Time

7. John Wayne - The Conqueror

Still, casting gets a lot more blatantly racist by having John Wayne rather poorly portray Genghis Khan in his infamous The Conqueror, the white, good 'ol boy playing the most notorious Mongolian warrior in the history of humanity. Wayne, who had nurtured the project as a pet of his over several years, was at least self-aware enough to concede how wrong he was for the part in retrospect, declaring that you should not "make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you€™re not suited for". Right he was, but that wasn't even the worst failure of the film; it was filmed near a nuclear testing site, causing over a third of the cast and crew to contract cancer - with Wayne himself dying from it - and making the project seem even more tragically disastrous. This is a case of an actor simply getting too big for his breeches, yet ironically, this spot of racist casting feels all the more racist because Wayne is so recognised as a cowboy, and a very white one at that.