If Hollywood gave better cinematic airtime to strong tellings of Biblical and ancient-era histories, for example, I believe more actors like him should be considered.
Posted on 12/27/2019 12:30:11 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Mena Massoud had just, in theory, become a billion-dollar man.
...His big breakout year in Hollywood, and that aforementioned cash haul: the live-action remake of Aladdin, in which he beat out 2,000 actors to play the title character, had just crossed the billion-dollar mark at the box office.
It turns out a billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.
The handsome 28-year-old actor—the kind of handsome that gets cast as Disney princes, with hypnotizing dimples such that when a stranger flies up to your window on a throw rug and asks “do you trust me,” you swan dive onto the damn thing—is in the mood to be candid.
"I haven’t had a single audition since Aladdin came out.”
“It’s wild to a lot of people,” he says. “People have these ideas in their head. It’s like, I'm sitting here being like, OK, Aladdin just hit $1 billion. Can I at least get an audition? Like I’m not expecting you to be like, here’s Batman. But can I just get in the room? Like, can you just give me a chance? So it’s not always what you think.”
It was back in Egypt when he was a baby that Mena Massoud first watched Disney’s 1992 animated musical Aladdin. He has two older sisters who both idolized Princess Jasmine, so wisecracking genies, magic carpets, and “A Whole New World” were on constant rotation before he could walk or talk.
His family immigrated to Toronto when he was three-and-a-half years old. As Coptic Christians, his parents sensed that it was too dangerous to raise a young family in Egypt in the ’90s and headed to North America...
It’s how he’s been his entire career thusfar, recounting his experience as an Egyptian immigrant to Canada, the struggle to find roles that aren’t terrorist...
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
If Hollywood gave better cinematic airtime to strong tellings of Biblical and ancient-era histories, for example, I believe more actors like him should be considered.
It appears nobody in Hollywood has an Aladdin movie in the works.
He’s been type cast.
I hope he was paid well for what is likely to be his only “billion dollar” role.
Is he typecast as Aladdin? Does he just not fit the stereotype of a leading man? Powers that be in Hollywood just don’t see him in that way?
Heck, do some in Hollywood stereotype him as just a Disney actor making movies for kids? I’m sure there is some untold story why he isn’t getting called for other jobs.
He obviously isn’t sleeping with the right people.
Must be his breath
Could play a heavy in the next “Strike Back” season plot-arc.
Where has she been, since Hairspray movie?
Arabesque fantasies were so 1940s-1966. Now Superheros are in.
Ugh, what a prissy the author is.
Isn’t she mainly a Broadway actress, as opposed to movies and TV?
Also, she is a bit heavy set, so doesn’t fit the bill of what the powers that be are looking for, as politically incorrect as that may be to say.
I think, like, I see the problem.
Nobody wants, like, a kid who, like, can't put a coherent, like, sentence together without, like, having it written down for him.
-PJ
The movie just came out this year! He is being a bit disingenuous https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4565815/?ref_=nmmi_mi_nm
Good looking guy.
Just keep going to calls
I’ve been to few and they still haven’t hired me....
Maybe they know I’m a freeper....
Maybe his is a freeper...
“...the live-action remake of Aladdin...”
There WAS a live-action remake of Aladdin?
Never heard of him. Never heard of the movie. Those are my excuses for not calling him for my next film.
He probably needs to be cast as an ISIS head-chopper in his next film to offset his current type-cast.
Adriana Caselotti had one of the most distinctive voices in Disney history and she never had another role. She was 19 when Disney hired her and could only land 2 minor uncredited bit parts the rest of her career. She died at 80 known mostly as a trivia answer.
Interesting!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriana_Caselotti
He should be thankful he got the part, and now he can be in the dozen sequels.
I’ve seen plenty of young Middle Eastern men who are very attractive, but he is not one of them, in my opinion. Maybe he’s really nice, though. He could learn a marketable skill and have a successful career.
Let’s have a movie about Alibaba and cast him as the male lead. Billionaire Jack Ma if Alibaba fame can fund this movie :)
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