Rooney Mara says she regrets taking the role of Tiger Lily in Pan

By Dennis DiClaudio | February 23, 2016 | 10:12pm

Aux Features Film

While there are surely many reasons for an actor to regret accepting a role in the supremely underwhelming, CGI-drenched Pan, Rooney Mara’s probably best captures our cultural zeitgeist. In a year in which the media is (finally) taking umbrage at the depressing and infuriating lack of diversity in the film industry, Joe Wright’s unnecessary Peter Pan origin story came under particular fire for casting lily-white actress Mara as the Native American princess Tiger Lily. “I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation. I really do,” she lamented to The Telegraph during a recent interview. “I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.”

The actress—a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for her role in Carol—also hesitantly offered something that seems like it might have been sort of an opinion concerning the overall Caucasian-ness of her fellow nominees. “Here is the thing, I have a lot to say and I have very strong opinions about it, but it is such a sensitive issue I don’t want to reduce it to a sound bite,” she said. “I feel like that is what is happening. It is being turned into pull quotes and headlines, and that isn’t opening up a conversation so much as pointing fingers at people and taking their awards out of context. I don’t want to step into the conversation in that way.”