Who is the most American-looking American?

I might say actor Ed Harris, but Mexican movie fans had their own bald gringo they loved to hate:

The late Ohio-born actor Roger Cudney (1936-2021).

For example, here’s the opening scene in the fine Mexican satirist Luis Estrada’s 2014 movie, The Perfect Dictatorship, in which Cudney plays Ambassador Ford (a particularly American sounding automotive/presidential name) meeting with an El Presidente modeled upon the slightly dim Enrique Peña Nieto (with a punchline lifted from Vicente Fox):

From the Wall Street Journal:

Ohio Native Finds Stardom Acting South of the Border

Roger Cudney Makes a Career in Mexican Film By Playing Bad Guys From North of the Border

By Matt Moffett and Jose De Cordoba
Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

Jan. 27, 2003 12:01 am ET

MEXICO CITY -- Roger Cudney, a smallish, 66-year-old with a receding hairline and a gleaming smile, may be the most notorious gringo in Mexico. Some Mexicans know him as a plunderer of ancient archaeological treasures. Others remember him as the union-busting manager of a sweatshop. Still others recognize Mr. Cudney as a pathologically nasty Texas ranger or a meddling diplomat.

Mr. Cudney has been all of these things and more in a 30-year acting career in Mexican TV and movies. The Ohio-born Mr. Cudney came to Mexico in the 1960s to play the lead in the musical "Showboat," but he soon found a different dramatic calling. "Roger Cudney is the epitome of the bad gringo, a blending of all the worst American stereotypes," says David Wilt, who compiled the Biographical Dictionary of Mexican Film Performers.

In contrast, Margaret Thatcher always struck me as very English-looking in a way you don’t see all that often in America:

When the young Margaret Thatcher entered the House of Commons in 1959, she was considered quite the English Rose by conservative-leaning Brits like David Lean, Alec Guinness, and Kingsley Amis.

UPDATE: Several of the commenters figured out why Mexicans think Roger Cudney looked like the quintessential American. Mexicans had a really good reason. So check in the comments.

On Twitter, somebody posted a picture of director John Sayles and his actor Chris Cooper and somebody else replied:

Ab

@Bushwhackin97

He looks like a lot of guys I know who have just enough native ancestry to get a few features, but still generally look like a white dude.

Scots-Irish guy who kind of maybe is a little Amerindian is a thing, although it doesn’t seem to come up very often in DNA scans.

I’m wondering whether another way to get that look is not from DNA but from doing the traditional cowboy squint (e.g., Clint Eastwood) while being out on the plains in the sun without sunglasses. Chris Cooper, for example, grew up on a cattle ranch in Texas. Northwest Europe has less sun and more shade trees, so Europeans don’t do the cowboy squint as much as Americans.