Charlotte Rampling, a Best Actress Academy Awards nominee for her performance in drama 45 Years, has weighed in on the Oscars diversity boycott, saying the backlash over an all-white acting nominee list is “racist to whites”.
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“Maybe this time, no black actor or actress deserved to make it to the final selection, she said during an interview on French radio station Europe 1”.
LONDON (AP) Academy Award-nominated actress Charlotte Rampling said her comments that an Oscars’ boycott is “racist to white people” were misinterpreted.
“People will always say, “Him, he’s less handsome”; “Him, he’s too black”; “He is too white”.
Speaking in French, she asked if the goal was to classify everybody and have “thousands of little minorities everywhere”.
What Rampling said was particularly pernicious, and probably reflected the secret thoughts of many white and older voters who are baffled by this new emphasis on social equality in the film world. They say, ‘We’re black actors and we still don’t really exist’.
Today the Academy announced major plans to combat the problem, including the decision to appoint three new members to the 51-person board of governors and review each member’s voting rights every ten years, dependent on how active they are in the film industry over that decade.
Later, she was asked if the Academy should have some kind of quota system – and suggested that racism no longer exists.
Even Academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said she was “both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion”.
Following the outcry after the release of the Oscar nomination list, where all 20 acting nominees are white for the second year in a row, some stars, including Will Smith, his wife and Lee are calling for an Oscar boycott.
Academy Award-nominated actress Charlotte Rampling has clarified her recent comments about the Oscar diversity controversy in a statement to CBS’ “Sunday Morning”. So I was delighted to see that she is criticizing claims that this year’s Oscar nominations are unfair to African-Americans. “I’ll vote for him.’ You have to give a good performance”.
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Many critics believe that Smith (“Concussion”) had earned a nomination, as well as actors Idris Elba (“Beasts of No Nation”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“The Hateful Eight”). I think in the end you can’t vote for an actor (just) because he’s black.
