OSCAR NOMINATED ACTRESS Charlotte Rampling has said that the debate surrounding diversity at the Academy Awards is “racist to whites”.
For the second year in a row, all 20 acting nominations are for white actors and the issue has led to the growth of a boycott of the awards.
Rampling is nominated for a best actress award this year for her role in 45 Years. Asked about the controversy on France’s Europe 1 radio, she bluntly said that “it is racist to whites”.
“One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list,” Rampling added, according to a translation by The Guardian.
Asked if there should be quotas, not a suggestion made by boycott supporters, Rampling said we live “in countries nowadays where everyone is more or less accepted.”
But, she said, there would always be problems with people being judged “not handsome enough,” ”too black” or “too white”.
She asked if the goal was to classify everybody and have “thousands of little minorities everywhere.”
Following his wife’s lead, Will Smith became the latest figure in the industry to say he would not be attending this year’s Academy Awards.
- With reporting from Associated Press
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