7. Sir Ben Kingsley
English-born actor and knight Ben Kingsley has had a long and celebrated career of playing many different characters, some of whom have radically different backgrounds to Sir Ben. Hes perhaps most famous for playing Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenboroughs biopic of the legendary Indian leader, during the filming of which he donned copious amounts of dark make-up in order to more accurately represent the man. It was generally well-received (better than most attempts to make light-skinned actors dark, anyway), perhaps partly due to the fact that Kingsley has Indian genes on his fathers side, but he couldnt repeat the trick in Mike Myers catastrophic The Love Guru, in which he played a pitiful sex joke of a character in similar (but this time much more offensive) make-up. Its not 100% clear exactly what ethnicity Kingsleys Croydon-born actor is playing when performing as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, but its probably dangerous to assume that its anything close to being Asian as the characters origins are. Kingsley instead dons a dodgy yank accent that doesnt fool many and really should be a tip-off to the authorities that his character is just a hoax designed to distract them, and so its kind of a relief when his mask is ripped off Scooby Doo-style.