Movies: Brits Playing Americans

Returning to one of my favourite rant topics: why do they keep hiring British actors to play American characters? In "Ray" (thanks, Robb, for the loan of the DVD), the nightclub MC is played by Warwick Davis. Couldn't they find an American "short actor"? (I am, however, looking forward to seeing Warwick as Marvin the Paranoid Android in "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy".)

On the other hand, maybe they should have cast a British actor as Ahmet Ertegun - it was hard to listen to Curtis Armstrong without thinking of Herbert Viola from "Moonlighting", or Booger from "Revenge Of The Nerds".

Now I see that Kenneth Branagh is to play Franklin D. Roosevelt in HBO's "Warm Springs". Branagh is from Northern Ireland (Britain Lite). (This Belfast website confuses FDR with Teddy Roosevelt.) There's a photo of FDR at Warm Springs at the bottom of this page. Who would you cast as FDR? I'll suggest Michael Chiklis.