Inspired by our recent roast of the newest adaptation of “Come As You Are,” here are 15 Disabled Characters That Should Have Been Played by Disabled Actors.
Warning – this article comments on plots containing suicide, abuse, and disabled slurs.
#15: Sean Penn as Sam Dawson in I Am Sam
To start us off, we have our first portrayal of someone with a mental disability! Penn’s character of Sam Dawson is a father with an undisclosed “intellectual disability” who has an abled daughter. This movie sits pretty low because, aside from the fact that Penn does not have an intellectual disability, the research and the plot seem to do the disability community some kind of justice. The screenwriters of I Am Sam, Jessie Nelson and Kristine Johnson, have cited their research of the issues facing adults with mental disabilities and visited the non-profit L.A. GOAL (Greater Opportunities for the Advanced Living), as well as cast two actors with disabilities in supporting roles. [Brad Silverman is cited as Brad, and Joe Rosenberg is cited as Joe, both of whom are in Sam’s friend group.] Sam’s character is provided with a supportive group of friends and neighbors and the movie actually has a happy ending, with Sam keeping custody of his daughter and proving that disabled adults are capable of the independence and responsibility required to take care of a child.
#14: Patrick Stewart as Professor X in the X-Men Film Series
This role didn’t require an excess of editing to make it work, so it’s not getting too much heat. However, as always, Stewart is not a wheelchair user in real life, nor is he a paraplegic or quadriplegic, as Professor X is portrayed in the comic book series. Just from watching the trailers, it doesn’t appear that the fact that Professor X is a wheelchair user comes into play much in the story, which could be a positive – he’s a disabled character merely existing in the world without a plot line or story directly attached to his disability. In fact, I rather appreciate his presence in this science-fiction movie, because it also doesn’t appear that he faces any accessibility barriers, which is a tad unrealistic, but hey, science-fiction gives us that fantasy of unlimited accessibility, right? There is one frame in the 2000 film trailer where Professor X appears to be knocked out of his wheelchair and, therefore, stranded, but it’s merely a frame, so I can’t expunge upon how that is dealt with or what surrounds the incident. It would have been easy enough to get a wheelchair user to play Professor X, but it wasn’t done. For a movie with so much CGI, you would think they would take realism wherever they could, right?
#13: Scarlett Johansson as Grace MacLean in The Horse Whisperer
Once again, Johansson comes under fire for portraying a character not suited for her, except in this case, it’s portraying someone with a disability instead of a different race. Her character Grace in The Horse Whisperer suffers a riding accident that leaves her with a partially amputated right leg. As I’m sure you can guess, Johansson is not an amputee. However, her missing limb does not appear to have much relevance to the plot. Grace is shown using a forearm crutch, but for the most part the movie is shot to “hide” her missing leg, and when it appears on camera it is nothing more than an empty pant leg. Like Stewart as Professor X, it doesn’t appear that a lot of work was done to manage her character’s disability on-screen. Honestly, I’m curious how they managed to edit it out. Unlike…
#12: Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road
Ugh, I know, this one hurts to write as much as it hurts to read. I’m a die hard MM:FR fan (I saw it three times in theatres), but we’ve got to address this concern. Theron plays a badass warrior in a post-apocalyptic world who fights to save the lives of five women selected only for breeding. Furiosa has a mechanical arm, much like an apocalyptic prosthesis, which has a wicked cool design – unfortunately, Theron very much has two functioning arms. This reduces the ingenuity of the mechanical arm’s use and function as it would for an actual amputee, and this lack of function is why I’ve rated it after Johansson, though the two cases are similar. In addition, it (as many roles on this list will do) takes away potential roles for a disabled actor. I imagine it took quite a bit of money and time to edit Theron’s arm out of all of her takes – imagine how much time and money would be saved if the actress just… didn’t have an arm!
#11: John Hurt as John Merrick in The Elephant Man
Our first instance of rewarding disability without rewarding the disabled! By this, I mean the trend of featuring facial or otherwise bodily disfigurements through makeup being rewarded in Hollywood – in fact, the work on The Elephant Man forced the Academy to create the “Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling” to properly honor the work that went into recreating John Merrick’s disfigurements on Hurt’s face. This is troubling because, like Theron’s role, more work went into “creating” a character instead of just finding an actor with the proper physicality. Films like The Elephant Man help dramatize disabled people by permitting the idea that disability is something that can merely be recreated with makeup, and the creation of this Academy Award rewards abled people for their work “recreating” disabled people, instead of rewarding the movie for what it does, which is creating the space to talk about a disabled person’s story. I’m giving it a bit of wiggle room because the film was released in 1980 and did make some incredible strides in the field of theatrical makeup, but that doesn’t excuse the act of “cripping up.”
#10: Jacob Tremblay as Auggie Pullman in Wonder
Our second instance of makeup for facial disfigurement comes in the movie Wonder, a novel adaptation that centers around Auggie, a young boy with mandibulofacial dysostosis who has undergone several surgeries to see, speak, smell, and hear. Watching the trailer for this movie, at first I thought it might not be too bad. As expected, when Auggie begins school, the other children make fun of him and ostracize him for his looks. However, it’s the kids that end up bridging that gap in the movie – Auggie’s friend Jack, whom he catches making fun of him, ends up defending him from a bully, and later in the film the same group of bullies defends Auggie from older students trying to taunt him. In fact, it’s revealed that the parents of the bullies are the ones encouraging the behavior – one mom even photoshops Auggie out of a school photograph and defends her son’s poor treatment of Auggie.
Unfortunately, the movie ends up as another “inspiration porn” story – Auggie is awarded a medal for his strength and courage at the graduation ceremony, and is told by his mother that “you really are a wonder, Auggie.” Auggie appears to keep up the kind demeanor of a stereotypical placid disabled person that merely takes their struggles with a smile, and since the book was written by an able-bodied person in the first place as a response to a negative interaction her own child had with another disabled child – well, it’s gonna be a little bit fake, especially once Hollywood gets its hands on it.
#9: Laura Dern as Diana Adams & Eric Stoltz as Rocky Dennis in Mask
Once again, I am just… appalled at the amount of work that goes into creating these disabled characters when you could just cast a disabled actress. And Mask goes above and beyond by featuring TWO abled actors in disabled roles! Both the main character, “Rocky” Dennis, who is supposed to have craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, and Dern as Diana, the blind love interest, are played by able-bodied actors. And, once again, Mask won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, further proving (and rewarding) the idea of superficial disability. Both this movie and The Elephant Man are both biographical/historical dramas based on real people, which starts to create a grey area for morality – of course, it’s important to share these stories about disabled people, but does it make the cripping up worse for that? Mask gets a worse roast because, as I mentioned, two abled actors playing disabled roles, and one of them was another (what I’ll call) throwaway casting – it may have been difficult to find someone to fit the facial disfigurations of Rocky, but I’m sure they could have found a blind actress to play Diana. However, this still isn’t as bad as…
#8 & #7: Hilary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby & as Kate in You’re Not You
An abled actress playing not one, but TWO separate disabled characters in two different movies! In Million Dollar Baby, Swank plays a boxer struck down in her prime to be a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic; in You’re Not You, she plays a pianist with ALS, and both characters appear to be subject to intense dramatic suffering as well as the sexism that comes along with a disabled female character. Both characters are suicidal due to the problems their disabilities cause – Maggie, from the loss of her boxing career and sudden lack of mobility; Kate, from her husband cheating on her and not wanting to be a burden on his life – and both films end with the character “tragically” dying from their disabilities, all concerns of which are overused stereotypes that only serve the abled fantasy of disability as tragedy. Both characters are often at the mercy of other abled characters in the movie as well – for example, Maggie is dosed with a fatal shot of adrenaline by her boxing trainer after asking to die, and Kate’s carer speaks to many people for her, eventually making medical decisions for her that take away much of her remaining agency. These movies frustrate me because they were produced ten years apart, in 2004 and 2014. I would think that both the movie producers as well as the actress in question would have figured out that “cripping up” is not a glamorous thing to be repeated.
#6: Jude Law as Jerome Eugene Morrow in Gattaca
Oh man, we’re getting in deep with the disability concerns with this movie. There’s a lot of issues I take with Gattaca, the main one being its false pretense as a science-fiction film. Unlike X-Men, where the mutants are clearly “different” and treated as such (which isn’t great, but it’s a good metaphor), in Gattaca, the futuristic society uses eugenics to create genetically stronger humans, who are then sorted into two groups – “valids” and “in-valids,” and you can guess which group has the disabled people in it. *eye roll* “Genetic profiling” is supposed to be illegal, but in practice people are subject to genetic testing, with “valids” receiving higher employment while “in-valids” are subject to menial labor. This concept may sound “futuristic,” but its roots are absolutely present-day concerns. Disabled people are passed over for jobs and opportunities all the time, even though there are anti-discrimination acts in place.
Law’s character, Jerome, is specifically subject to just… terrible representation. His character is a former swimming star who was paralyzed after he threw himself in front of a car after coming in second place at a swim meet – he’s destroyed by the fact that he is “designed to be the best” and yet comes up short. In one unbelievable scene, Jerome, a wheelchair user, is faced with a spiral staircase. In response to it, Jerome throws himself out of his chair and begins to drag himself up the staircase with his arms, while dramatic music plays on to heighten the struggle. It’s sickeningly fake – you can watch it here if you want to torture yourself.
Disappointingly, this movie could comment on major concerns that face the disability community, such as the potential of eugenics to genetically change those with disabilities or the discrimination that people face, but instead it encourages the main character, who poses as valid by using Jerome’s DNA, to continue hiding his “invisible disability” and to “exceed his expectations,” the last comment of which is told to him by Jerome, who commits suicide at the end of the movie for failing to do exactly that.
#5: Leonardo diCaprio as Arnie Grape in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Do me a favor and please, don’t look up this movie. At first glance, diCaprio’s character of Arnie, who is described as only having a vague “mental illness,” just seems like another unrealistic stereotype of mentally disabled people in movies. Arnie is subject to the care of his older brother, Gilbert Grape, who enforces things such as a “nobody touches Arnie” policy (denying him agency) as well as hitting Arnie in frustration after he refuses to take a bath. Such control and abuse is framed as permissible in the movie because after asking Arnie’s forgiveness, Arnie forgives Gilbert for his abusive actions. The reason this role ranked so high on the list is due to the quote I found from diCaprio on his research for the role:
“I had to really research and get into the mind of somebody with a disability like that. So I spent a few days at a home for mentally ill teens. We just talked and I watched their mannerisms. People have these expectations that mentally retarded children are really crazy, but it’s not so. It’s refreshing to see them because everything’s so new to them.”
*insert grimacing emoji here* Now, granted, this movie was made in 1993, so I’m gonna let the r-slur go for now, but diCaprio’s research further dehumanizes mentally ill people. This quote especially confuses me, because in the film, Arnie appears to have some sort of cognitive impairment issue, which (we know today) is markedly different from mental illnesses (anxiety, depression, DID, or bipolar disorders). diCaprio instead infantilizes the teens he met with, and as a result his character lands very flat and appears to act as more of a plot device than a supporting character.
#4: Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything
This one narrowly escaped the #1 spot, but personally, this movie drives me up the wall. Redmayne portrays famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who is well-known for developing ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) in his later life and using a motorized wheelchair with digital voice synthesizer. The challenge with this film is that it is a biopic spanning Hawking’s entire adult life, more or less, which means it moves from a time when he was not disabled to a time when he was. Obviously, there is no way to get a single actor to properly portray both a disabled and non-disabled man in a single movie. However, I’m not sure I can think of a good solution to this problem. Perhaps they could have cast a disabled person for his later life and Redmayne for his earlier life? Would that have interrupted the continuity of the movie too much? Either way, this movie is just another example of cripping up – even worse, however, is that Redmayne is portraying a real-life person, adding insult to injury that far surpasses fictional characters.
#3: Dustin Hoffmann as Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man
Ah, yes, yet another film categorizing autistic people as savants. We love it. Just kidding, we don’t love it. Hoffmann’s portrayal of Raymond Babbitt is supposed to serve as an examination of autistic savants, or autistic (or otherwise mentally disabled) people who demonstrate heightened mental abilities. Unfortunately, this has created a stereotype of autistic people that they are all savants, or have those characteristics, when in reality that is far from the truth. Hoffmann is not even an autistic person himself, further pushing the idea that autism and its related characteristics are superficial and can merely be portrayed as such on a film screen.
#2: Craig Roberts as Trevor in The Fundamentals of Caring
TFoC gets the #2 spot for many of the same reasons that CAYA was such a concern. Roberts portrays Trevor, a teen with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The plot of the movie (again, like CAYA…) features a road trip to see the “world’s deepest pit,” the movie ending with Trevor achieving his goal of urinating standing up, with the help of his carer, Ben, and a spinal board (and how they manage to get proper medical equipment for a movie when thousands of disabled people are left stranded without it by healthcare systems and equipment price gouging… is beyond me). Besides the fact that Roberts is not a disabled actor, this movie once again elicits the stereotype that disabled people only exist to be inspirational and cross items off their bucket list while also suffering dramatic trauma and being appreciative of any kind of romantic inclination. This is also in the #2 spot because it is one of the newest movies on this list, while also being a Netflix Original. These two factors, I would argue, should allow this movie to break more barriers than some of the older movies on this list, but the fact is that “cripping up” is still alive and well in the film industry, no matter how indie the production is.
#1: Sam Claflin as Will Traynor in Me Before You
I audibly gagged while I was watching the trailer for this movie. Actually, reading the synopsis for it makes me want to cry. There are so many concerns with this movie I don’t even know where to start. First of all, something easy – Claflin plays Will, who is paralyzed from the neck down and a motorized wheelchair user. Claflin is not disabled. Even though that is the chief concern of this article, the movie gets even worse. Not only does the plot entirely focus around the “loss” of life that comes with a disability, it checks off so many disability stereotype boxes it’s not even worth watching. The general plotline is that Louisa (Lou) is hired as a caretaker for Will, and she is determined to show him that life is worth living, and in return Will insists that Lou needs to live her life to the fullest (because he is unable to do so any longer now that he’s disabled, obviously *sarcasm*). Will decides that he wants to undergo physician-assisted suicide because he, according to the synopsis, “refuses to accept life with a disability that entails dependency, pain, and suffering without any hope for recovery of his old self.” He even tells Lou to go live a full life without him instead of a “half-life” by his side, though the two have grown incredibly close, as well as telling her “I don’t want you to miss all the things that someone else could give you,” implying that disabled people are a burden on their loved one’s lives. Lou even tries to deny Will this small amount of agency he is allotted by saying that he decided on the suicide before he met her, and stating that she “can’t just let this happen.” If we dive even further into it, the relationship that happens between Lou and Will creates an ideal that disabled people can only find happiness by being in a relationship with someone or having an external person push love and an appreciation of life onto them, worsened by the fact that the trailer ends with Lou holding Will’s face and telling him, “I can make you happy.” Even worse is that Lou is his caretaker, which appears to be a kind of Florence Nightingale effect, though Lou and Will do interact more than would be expected of that specific trope. Overall, Will’s character is just another springboard for abled inspiration. He tells Lou, “You only get one life. It is your duty to live it as fully as possible,” implying that he cannot because of his disability, the concept of which is just absolutely tossed around throughout the movie. The film trailer ends with Lou stating, “I have become a whole new person because of you,” which… *barf* Inspiration porn at its finest. These producers aren’t even trying to hide it. This was also a film based on a book, which was – no surprise – written by an abled author. We need more stories about disabled characters, yes, but we also need the genuity and honesty that accompanies these characters from having been written by disabled authors and portrayed by disabled actors.
