They got her early. She had a few solid credits to her name when she did Iron Man 2, but the smart MCU move at that point was to recruit young-ish talent and get them signed on for multi-movie contracts relatively cheap. Hopefully what we all get out of that sort of arrangement is that talented actors make enough MCU money to go off and do whatever out-there artsy stuff that creatively appeals to them and fosters their talents, rather than having to plug away in garbage movies just to pay the bills.
She was definitely a name before Ironman 2 with movies like "Lost in Translation", "The Island", "Girl with a pearl earring", "Black Dahlia" to name a few.
I remember people being excited about seeing her in Ironman 2.
You are right that they grabbed cheaper people originally, but they werent unknown names.
Just a reminder since people apparently still have this confusion; ghost in the shell wasn't white washed. The character from book one is described as western looking specifically to be able to infiltrate any country without suspicion falling on Japan.
We can discuss why they didn't white face a Japanese person if thats somehow less offensive than hiring for the look of the android body instead of the original body that died of cancer as a little girl, but that seems even more silly than people that had no interest in the series (or anime/manga in general) getting upset about accurate casting.
You're right, everyone that doesn't demand she has sex with a child on screen is a filthy casual. Absolutely absurd of people to base their image of the character on its most popular forms, the movie and anime.
No idea what the plot is of this, haven't consumed any version of it, but it feels pretty fucking stupid to respond to something about the skin color of the protagonist by suggesting they should also want a child sex scene. Like, what??