Ian McKellen Suggests Oscars Diversity Problem Also Extends To Gays & Women

In the last couple of weeks there’s unsurprisingly been a lot of anger and frustration at the fact that out of 20 acting nominees in this year’s Oscar, no people of color are represented (mirroring what happened last year), and the likes of Straight Outta Compton and other films concentrating on non-white characters were completely shut out. However, Ian McKellen has stepped forward to suggest that the problems with diversity at the Oscars don’t just extend to people of color, but also affect women and gay people too.

In a new interview with Sky News, McKellen says, “The Oscars have a very special place in the lives of American actors, even more so than here. As a representative of the industry they are in, the film industry is receiving complaints that I fully sympathise with.”

“It’s not only black people who have been disregarded by the film industry, it used to be women and certainly gay people to this day. These are all legitimate complaints, and the Oscars is the focus of these complaints at the moment.”

He certainly has a point, with only one female having ever won the Best Director gong, and few ever being nominated. No openly gay actor has ever won an Oscar either (although admittedly a decent amount have been nominated for playing gay characters).

However while the focus has been on the Oscars themselves and the diversity issues of the Academy’s membership (they are predominantly white males, with an average age of 62), to a large extent it is symptomatic of Hollywood itself. While some black (male) actors have become huge stars, most still face severe limits on the type and number of roles they’re offered. Similarly female actors are often trapped in stereotyped supporting roles in the biggest films, while openly gay people are often seen as too much of a commercial risk (particularly in regards to how they might affect box office in everywhere from homophobic countries to the American Mid-West) meaning they rarely get offered genuinely massive roles.

It often seems to be two steps forwards one step back in Hollywood, as for a supposedly liberal industry, it’s incredibly conservative both in terms of what it thinks will be commercial and what it will take a ‘risk’ on, which makes it an uphill battle to ensure proper Hollywood diversity.