And they couldn’t find an actor of Russian ancestry to play the Kurgan... but they did have an actor of Russian ancestry play another famous fantasy Spaniard swordsman—Inigo Montoya—a year later. And they cast Connery as a Russian in The Hunt for Red October a few years after that. (And meanwhile, the actor of Spanish ancestry who would have been appropriate for the role of Ramirez in Highlander—Ricardo Montalban—was cast as a man of Indian/Sikh ancestry in The Wrath of Khan.)
I don’t think casting actors of appropriate ethnicities for their roles became a big factor in Hollywood until the 90s.
Connery, Montalban, and Patinkin all did great in their roles, though.
It's as if any play is for a given audience, and we have to bridge the gap with our own imagination. Crazy, right? 😆
Mind, I'm not criticizing your point, I agree with it, Hollywood has never been great with accents, it just has to be "good enough", like watching a stage play and the props have to be "good enough".
I first watched this as an adult in the 2010s, made a reddit thread about how it kinda sucks, and I guess it hit google cause I'd get new messages every few months on that thread
I'm not sure I follow? His character is Egyptian, he was immortal. Though I take OP's point, he couldn't really be Scottish since he had been alive long before Scotland existed, possibly before the Picts even.