Nominee says call for Oscar diversity is "racist to whites"

Charlotte Rampling is one of the 20 people nominated for an acting award at this year's Oscars and she sasy the #OscarsSoWhite backlash over the lack of diversity in this year's nominations is "racist to whites."

The 69-year-old British actress, who was nominated in the Best Actress category for her role in the movie "45 Years", made the comments in French in an interview Friday with Radio 1 in France.

She went on to say, "One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list."

Asked if there should be quotas — not a suggestion made by most boycott supporters — Rampling said we live "in countries nowadays where everyone is more or less accepted," but there would always be problems with people being judged "not handsome enough," ''too black" or "too white."

Rampling's comments came after actor two-time Academy Award recipient Michael Caine said in an interview that black actors need to "be patient".

Spike Lee and Will Smith have both announced that they would not attend the event this year after no actors of color were nominated.