48-year-old actor Bradley Cooper (right) plays American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (left) in his upcoming biopic Maestro < p>Hollywood actor Bradley Cooper was accused in «Jewish Face» for wearing a prosthetic nose to play Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein.
The 48-year-old actor has been embroiled in an anti-Semitic scandal after a trailer was released for the Netflix film Maestro.
The trailer for the film, due to be released in November, shows Cooper wearing a prosthetic face to achieve an exaggerated nose that critics say plays on age — an old anti-Semitic stereotype.
Dave Rich, head of policy at the Public Safety Foundation, which was founded in 1994 to protect British Jews from anti-Semitism and related threatened him, called the image «offensive and humiliating.»
He told The Telegraph, «It's very hard to imagine that none of the people involved in this film knew that it could be a problem to put an absurdly large and pointed fake nose on a Jewish character. This is something that should have been consigned to history, but unfortunately still too common today.”
Bradley Cooper draft
Binyomin Gilbert, a spokesman for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: “It's amazing that no one has thought twice about sticking a big nose at a non-Jewish actor playing a Jew. The filmmakers must show that they understand why this is a problem.
«Failure to do so would mean that there is a double standard when it comes to portraying Jews on screen.»
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The son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants, the famous conductor Bernstein became the youngest musical director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958.
When urged early in his career to change his name to Burns to improve his chances of success, Mr. Bernstein, best known for writing the music for West Side Story, replied, «I'll do it like Bernstein, or not at all.»
Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, said that “the composer's Jewishness was a central pillar of his personality and he had to be played by a Jewish actor. The decision to include a prosthetic nose — larger than Bernstein's real nose — evokes 800-year-old anti-Semitic tropes based on the exaggeration of this characterization.»
Bradley Cooper also directed Maestro with a production team that included Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. with Jewish-British actress Tracey-Anne Oberman describing Mr. Cooper's facial enhancement as «the equivalent of Blackface or Yellowface.»
She said the star played the Elephant Man without the use of prosthetics, so «should be able to play a Jew without him.»
In 2018, Jewish actor Jake Gyllenhaal announced that he would play Mr. Bernstein in the biopic The American, produced by his Nine Stories Productions.
A few days later, Mr. Cooper announced that he was producing a rival production with Steven Spielberg and Martin . Scorsese.
Eventually, the Bernstein estate transferred exclusive rights to the music to Mr. Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment.
Mr. Spielberg has already built a relationship with the estate while working on his 2021 reboot. from West Side Story.
The West Wing star defends Cooper
Speaking to Deadline in 2021, Mr. Gyllenhaal said: “No one likes to admit it, but we lost our own game. That's basically what happened.»
He said that «the idea of playing one of the most prominent Jewish artists in America and his struggle with his identity has been in my heart for 20+ years, but sometimes these things won't work… Bottom line, and this may be my Achilles' heel or my superpower, but I wish them all the best.» image of Mr. Bernstein.
Jewish West star Joshua Malina told Page Six he «doesn't mind making Bradley Cooper look like a real person.»
The film was also criticized for casting English actress Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, the wife of Mrs. Bernstein, who was a Chilean-American actress born in Costa Rica.
The Telegraph has reached out to Mr. Cooper's representatives for comment.
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