Rinko Kikuchi for Babel movie

Babel movie! (This is Schoolgirl in Japan for style of the sock)

I read several interviews with the hearing actress, Rinko Kikuchi who played the Deaf Japanese character in Babel, but nary a mention about deaf people or sign language (except for 'body language', 'facial expressions' and silence. But then I found this:

INTERVIEWER: I'd like to ask you about the auditioning process for Babel, because you said it took almost a year.

RINKO: I really tried to do my best, almost desperately so. It was a lot like a love relationship: I really wanted him to look at me and see me. At one point, Alejandro (the director) remarked that he preferred to have a real deaf-mute woman play the character and, sure enough, on the next audition every candidate was deaf-mute except me! Alejandro is very frank. He speaks his mind and doesn't hide his feelings, but sometimes that put a lot of extra pressure on me. I believed that, compared to those other candidates, I had the ability to approach the character as a professional actress. If it was the part of a criminal I was auditioning for, would that mean that only a real criminal could play that role? Of course not. I kept that in mind and believed that I had what it takes to do the part as a professional actor. The character of Chieko is sixteen, but if I had been sixteen myself, I couldn't have played her the way I did. When I was that age, I didn't have the capacity to keep an objective view of such a character and at the same time retain a very positive attitude toward playing her. I wouldn't have been able to keep a distance from it.

http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/rinko_kikuchi.shtml


Rinko was nominated for a best actress oscar last night, but did not win. What do you think? Only professional actors/actresses can act?

What about "City of God" (one of my all time favorite movies)? Nearly all of the actors/actresses in that movie came from the slums the movie was filmed in. And in my opinion, this made the movie more real, period. Hire a criminal to play a criminal in a movie, sure! I'm all for that. No one can really understand what it is like to be DEAF except for DEAF people themselves.