British actor Adam Pearson talks about the stereotypical roles that are usually offered to actors with disabilities.
The A different man star, 39, recently spoke with Diversity about how those screen roles tend to come off as inauthentic.
“Usually there are three kinds of roles, tropes or stereotypes, whatever language one wants to use,” he explained. “There is either a villain – that because I have a disfigurement, I want to kill Batman or James Bond. There is also a victim — ‘woe is me’, a small violin.”
“And then there’s the hero — because I have a deformity, but I do regular guy things, whatever regular guy things are, I’m kind of braver than the average guy,” he said.
Pearson then agreed that creatives have a responsibility to address these stereotypes when writing scripts.
“I think it’s lazy writing,” he admitted. “Why do non-disabled people write about disability without consultation? Because when that happens, the end result might be right one time, but nine times out of 10 it’s going to be really inauthentic and inaccurate and it’s going to serve not only the disability community, but disabled moviegoers as well.”
Fla. Woman with rare genetic disease lives with more than 100 tumors: ‘It hurts me beyond description’ (exclusive)
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Pearson was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a rare genetic condition that leaves his skin covered in thousands of thick, painful tumors.
Neurofibromatosis 1 affects about 100,000 people across the United States and only a few million worldwide, Dr. Kaleb Yohay, director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, previously told PEOPLE. Patients either get the disorder from their parents or through a random genetic mutation.
Pearson is acting A different man alongside Sebastian Stan and Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve.
In the film, written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, Stan plays a character named Edward who has neurofibromatosis and undergoes “major facial reconstruction surgery” and then becomes obsessed with the actor playing him in a stage play based on Edward’s life, according to Diversity.
Pearson also appeared in 2013 Under the skin.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education