12 Awful Movie Make-Up Fails That Were Horribly Distracting

5. Jim Sturgess - (Cloud Atlas)

The Desired Effect: "The Continuity of Souls" The Actual Effect: Anger. Lots and lots of anger. Like the distasteful yellowface Mickey Rooney incident, a particularly notable part of Jim Sturgess' performance in Cloud Atlas attracted a lot of negative attention because of a perceived racist element. Because the directors wanted to present the "continuity of souls" across the multiple characters and multiple settings, they used the same actors for every character, which involved making all of the actors up to look Asian, despite the fact that none of them were. Naturally, that meant eye prosthetics, which could have been a little bit forgivable if they had been good (considering the Wachowski's agenda) but it was awful, and horribly distracting, and it says a lot about the impact that it's one of the only memorable points of what should have been an epic project.