Bradley Cooper’s Jewface is a bit on the nose

In recent years, a bizarre opinion has appeared on the scene: characters on screen must be played by people who share their identity.

And Hollywood provides people with a never-ending list of triggering casting decisions.

Bryan Cranston got “a lot of shit” for being “an able-bodied actor playing a disabled actor” in The Upside. Angelina Jolie played a French woman of Afro-Cuban descent in A Mighty Heart. Ben Affleck played a Hispanic CIA technical operations officer in Argo.

Gasp!

Wait until they find out that Ben Affleck isn’t even in the CIA…

The latest chapter in this ridiculous rejection of the creativity of film and theater involves Bradley Cooper, who is being slammed for two reasons.

The first reason is that he will be playing American conductor (and Jewish) Leonard Bernstein, despite Bradley Cooper being non-Jewish (and a non-conductor).

The second reason is the prosthetics department decided to plaster a nose on Cooper that looks like it’s straight out of a Nazi propaganda poster.

And people can’t seem to distinguish between the two.

Stop Antisemitism, a leading non-partisan American-based organization fighting antisemitism, described it as “sickening.”

“Hollywood cast Bradley Cooper — a non Jew — to play Jewish legend Leonard Bernstein and stuck a disgusting exaggerated ‘Jew nose’ on him,” they tweeted. “All while saying no to Jake Gyllenhaal, an actually Jewish man, who has dreamt of playing Bernstein for decades.”

The issue here isn’t that Bradley Cooper is not Jewish while Leonard Bernstein was, or that Jake Gyllenhaal apparently got his feelings hurt.

After all, anyone who demands that actors — whose job it is to act — are as similar as possible to the character they mimic is essentially calling for the end of film, television and theater.

No, the real issue here is the nose.