http://www.theguardian.com/film/201...rampling-diversity-row-racist-to-white-people
EDIT: Bonus quote from Michael Caine:
Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling has claimed the current campaign to boycott the 2016 Academy Awards over claims of a diversity deficit is racist to white people.
Rampling, 69, is up for the best actress prize for her role in the British drama 45 Years, from director Andrew Haigh, where she will compete against Room’s Brie Larson, Carol’s Cate Blanchett, Joy’s Jennifer Lawrence and Brooklyn’s Saoirse Ronan. Asked for her take on the current furore over all-white lists of nominees on French Radio network Europe 1 on Friday morning, the British actor did not mince her words. “It is racist to whites,” she said.
“One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list,” added Rampling. Asked if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should introduce quotas, a proposal which no current advocate of increased diversity has mooted, she responded: “Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted ... People will always say: ‘Him, he’s less handsome’; ‘Him, he’s too black’; ‘He is too white’ ... someone will always be saying ‘You are too’ [this or that] ... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”
When the interviewer explains that black members of the film industry feel like a minority, Rampling replies: “No comment.”
EDIT: Bonus quote from Michael Caine:
Speaking on the Today Show on Radio 4 on Friday, Rampling’s fellow sixties icon Michael Caine advised black actors to “be patient”, and said it had taken him “years to get an Oscar, years.”
Added Caine, 82: “There’s loads of black actors. In the end you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You can’t say ‘I’m going to vote for him, he’s not very good, but he’s black, I’ll vote for him’,” said the star of The Italian Job and Get Carter. He continued: “You have to give a good performance and I’m sure people have. I saw Idris Elba [in Beasts Of No Nation] ... I thought he was wonderful.”