Actress Chloe Bennet has expressed her disgust with Hollywood in response to a fan on Instagram, denouncing the film industry’s racism, particularly towards people of Asian descent.
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In answer to a query about her name change, Bennet, best known for her role in the TV series Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, said she had to change her name from Chloe Wang in order to get a break.
"Hollywood is racist and wouldn't cast me with a last name that made them uncomfortable," Bennet wrote.
"Changing my last name doesn't change the fact that my BLOOD is half Chinese, that I lived in China, speak Mandarin or that I was culturally raised both American and Chinese... It means I had to pay my rent."
"Oh, the first audition I went on after I changed my name, I got booked," she told The Daily Beast last year. "So that's a pretty clear little snippet of how Hollywood works."
The actress praised actor Ed Skrein for his recent decision to give up a main role in the upcoming Hellboy reboot in favor an actor with Asian heritage in line with the character’s Japanese-American background.
"DAMN, that's a man. Thank you @edskrein for standing up against Hollywood's continuous insensitivity and flippant behaviour towards the Asian American community,” Bennet wrote on Instagram.
"There is no way this decision came lightly on your part, so thank you for your bravery and genuinely impactful step forward. I hope this inspires other actors/film makers to do the same. Fellas, take note. That's how it's done," she added.
The actress has taken advantage of her high profile to create awareness for racism, heading a social rights group she titled Represent Us Now which campaigns for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities to represent actors in Hollywood.
“I'm doing everything I can, with the platform I have, to make sure no one has to change their name again, just so they can get work," she wrote.