[Ammi]

Sir Michael Caine on Oscars race row: 'You can't vote for an actor just because he's black'

Sir Michael Caine said black actors should not be nominated just to add diversity, as he weighed in on the Oscars race row.

Hollywood heavyweights Spike Lee and Will Smith are boycotting the Academy Awards after no actors from ethnic minorities were nominated in the top four categories, but Sir Michael told Nick Robinson on Radio 4′s Today show it should not become a box-ticking exercise.

He said: “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’.”

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.”

The two-time Academy Award-winner also offered some advice to black actors to “be patient”.

“Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar, years,” he added.

Sir Michael also pointed out the bright side of an Oscars snub.

“The best thing about it is you don’t have to go. Especially the Oscars, 24 hours on an aeroplane and I’ve got to sit there clapping Leonardo DiCaprio.

“I love Leonardo, he played my son in a movie, but I’m too old to travel that far and sit in an audience and clap someone else,” he said.

After returning from acting retirement because “I couldn’t find a television show I wanted to watch everyday”, Sir Michael is starring in new movie Youth and has also filmed bank robbery movie Going In Style with Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin.

He admitted he has dismissed taking on another movie as he approaches his 83rd birthday, but said he would love to film the story of the Hatton Garden heist alongside Ray Winstone.

“I would do it, yeah, if the script was good. If I was starting that script it would begin extremely funny and then become extremely sinister because those guys are not funny guys, they’re serious criminals. It’s sort of comedy gets Jack Carter in the end,” he said.




..poor Michael, I don't really think he's understood what Spike Lee and others are saying, you can only 'give a good performance' or an Oscar nomination worthy performance if you're given an Oscar nomination worthy role in the first place...and 'those rooms' where all of the roles are cast with the movie executives, finance backers, writers, screen writers, producers etc..are very much 'white' is what Spike is saying...what Michael said about working with Ray Winstone as well, I think that's also a thing, that roles are written for specific actors/actresses just like songs are for music artists ..so if more diverse roles are not there for actors/actresses to show how diverse they themselves can be, then that's going to limit in screenwriters thinking of them when they're writing, or writers thinking of a black actor playing their character...they're not being allowed to fully helped to 'imagine' all possible castings that may be neutral and not specific to being a certain this or that...and not being allowed to imagine them all because of the lack of diverse roles for black actors/actresses, so it's a circle which has to be broken and has to start in those rooms without a monopoly of 'white'...so if a book is looked at to being adapted to a movie and 'neutral' lead characters/great characters/Oscar potential characters are there, there is an equal representation or more representation of voices in those rooms for all actors who could be just as perfect and could give the good performance that is needed because it isn't about meh performances, it's about meh roles compared to the opportunities of white actors ...it's a tough job making a performance good if it just hasn't got that scope of possibility...