There are two kinds of actors, passive pretty boy/girls who wait around for somebody to hand them parts for their looks, and businessmen/women who finance and star in their own films and roll the dice. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but they are anything but passive. They don't wait around for someone to hand them a part. They make their own parts.
Guess which kind of actor Mel is?
A racist one, by all appearances.
Exactly.