Fan Casting

Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese Actor who was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and 1920s. He was Hollywood's first sex symbol as woman flocked to the theaters to see his broodingly handsome good looks. However due to Anti-Miscegenation laws he was always cast as either a sexually dominant villain or a forbidden love. In one of his first movies The Cheat he rapes the protagonist after branding her with a cattle iron. He hated always being typecast as a villain saying once "My one ambition is to play a hero". He briefly founded his own production company but it ended after his business partner called him a racial slur. He eventually became so frustrated with the racism of early Hollywood that he left in 1922 to act in Japanese and European Cinema. He returned in 1949 and in 1957 he stared in his most famous role as Colonel Saito in Bridge on the River Kwai for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He died in 1973.