According to a historian, people from “exceptionally privileged backgrounds” have “hijacked” the acting industry.
According to author Lipika Pelham, “Eddie Redmayne, who attended Eton with Prince William,” and “Benedict Cumberbatch, a distant relative of Richard III,” are “typically represented” by today’s younger generation of A-list celebrities.
‘In the 21st century, acting opportunities appear to have been hijacked by actors from exceptionally privileged backgrounds,’ she writes in her book Passing: An Alternative History Of Identity.
‘There are still exceptions, but the trend is remarkable and remarked upon by those ever-rarer exceptions,’ she adds. ‘One of the few professions that has always, for centuries, been open to people from disadvantaged backgrounds is today becoming less and less diverse.’
She says actors from previous generations such as Anthony Hopkins and Julie Walters ‘had distinctly working-class upbringings’, and those ‘from slightly better-off families’ like Judi Dench and Ian McKellen ‘were still from modest, truly middle-class origins’.
‘While queer and non-white representation is now, very slowly, getting better, the trend seems to be the reverse when it comes to socio-economic representation,’ she says, adding: ‘Now there is no longer any social stigma attached to the acting profession, the upper-classes have sought and managed to reclaim the industry from the underprivileged.’
Miss Pelham cited Helena Bonham Carter as yet another example at a talk about her book at the Chalke Valley History Festival, which was sponsored by the Daily Mail.
She pointed to how the actress ‘appears as whatever character she wants to appear as’, including as ‘cockney-accented barber’s wife’ Mrs Lovett in the film Sweeney Todd ‘even though she comes from an upper-class background’, and as upper-class in The King’s Speech, in which she played Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
Miss Pelham, who is also a filmmaker, said Miss Bonham Carter’s acting in Sweeney Todd was ‘brilliant’, but she questioned why Sir Michael Caine, who comes from a working-class background, ‘didn’t get to act upper-class roles very often’.
She said she could not ‘remember any film where he’s actually passed up [portrayed himself as someone from a higher class]’.
Light-skinned slaves who escaped to freedom by posing as white people were the first people to whom the word “passing” was applied in 19th-century America.
While Caine is most remembered for playing working-class characters in movies like Alfie and The Italian Job, one of his most noteworthy performances came in Zulu as the clipped-accent speaking Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead.
Asked about her comments after the talk, Ms Pelham told the Mail the ‘class thing now is a big problem’. She added: ‘Casting should be according to the cultural, historical or social background of the actors otherwise it gets problematic. You have to equalise the balance of power.
‘You can ask, “Why should an Indian woman get away wearing Western clothes and not the other way round?” It’s because there’s no power dynamic at play.’