Maggie Cheung is a class act. We noted before Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” world premiere in Cannes that it looked like the actress had been cut out of the picture, and sure enough we saw it and yup, she wasn’t in the film.
Cheung then told Chinese press that she was ok with the decision noting how Tarantino “called [her] from Cannes to explain that [her] scenes had to be cut to ensure the film’s length.” Cheung accepted the decision with grace noting that she “really thought it was no big deal.”
Cheung played Madame Mimieux, the original owner of a French cinematheque that becomes a central narrative element in the picture.
In the original screenplay, Melanie Laurent’s character, Shosanna Dreyfus, who has just lost her parents at the hands of “Jew Hunter” Col. Hans Landa (Christophe Waltz), is reluctantly taken in by the hard-as-nails Madame Mimieux when she is discovered trying to secretly take shelter in her theater. Shosanna/Laurent then inherits the cinematheque after Mimieux passes away from undisclosed reasons and in the screenplay is supposed to pose as Mimieux’s niece (and in the film, while there’s no Cheung, Shosanna still masquerades as her relation, even though we never see the character).
And perhaps, aside from length, maybe another reason why Cheung was cut from the film was because even Tarantino thought explaining to audiences how the niece of an Asian woman that doesn’t look at all Asian might be a stretch, even for his wacky world. [ChinaDaily]