THE CLASS CEILING
Race and gender can be barriers to success ... but so can social hierarchy
It will change the population of actors, which is terrible, really. It won’t be representative of society.
There have been a slew of studies about how hard it is for women and people of colour to break into the entertainment industry, and a new British Academy of Film and Television Arts report reinforces those notions with the help of British actors.
Rogue One star Riz Ahmed, for example, says he nearly couldn’t go to drama school because he didn’t have the money. And Moonlight’s Oscar-nominated Naomie Harris credits colour-blind casting for supplying her big break in 28 Days Later.
But the report briefly mentions one other interesting variable: the “class ceiling” that holds back those not born at the right level on the social hierarchy.
One anonymous industry influencer puts it this way: “In film, you have to know the people who make the decisions (about film funding) and speak their language, but it really helps if you have family money and backing. Being (Black, Asian or minority ethnic) is not the issue, it’s being working class and not having contacts or money to smooth your way.”
Possible discrimination against working-class actors has been a recurring conversation across the pond for some time, especially as posh British private school kids, such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne and Emily Blunt, have recently shot to fame.
Vocal actors from workingclass backgrounds include James McAvoy, Ian McShane and Julie Walters. In past interviews, all three assure they have nothing against the prepsters raking it in, but they worry that arts funding has dried up, making it nearly impossible for newcomers who don’t have the resources to go to drama school.
Walters credits a grant to study English and drama that helped her break into acting. But those grants aren’t available anymore.
“It’s shocking how that flow of talent has just stopped,” she told Radio Times in 2015. “It will change the population of actors, which is terrible, really. It won’t be representative of society.”
McAvoy, meanwhile, worked at a bakery to pay his way through drama school.
He aired his concerns about the new privileged class of actors to the Herald of Scotland: “That’s a frightening world to live in because as soon as you get one tiny pocket of society creating all the arts, our culture starts to become representative not of everybody, but of one tiny part. And that’s not fair to begin with, but it’s also damaging for society.”
This is a particularly stubborn issue in a land that still glorifies its princes and duchesses. Superficially, this British problem becomes a Hollywood problem in an era when U.S. characters are often played by Brits.
But it’s also a U.S. problem because inequality is a U.S. problem — increasingly so.
Research shows the gap in income and wealth between the haves and have-nots is at historic levels. And so is the lack of social mobility.
One report says fewer than 10 per cent of those born into the bottom fifth of wealth distribution will make it into the top fifth, and just 20 per cent of people in the middle fifth rise to the top tier.
Even as there has been a push for more racial diversity in entertainment, it may not necessarily help the class gap. Shonda Rhimes, for example, had to overcome a lot as a female black showrunner, and she’s credited for changing the face of television with Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. It doesn’t diminish these accomplishments to say that Rhimes had a middle-class upbringing. She’s the daughter of a professor and has an Ivy League education.
Of course there have been some stories of class mobility. Steve McQueen was abandoned by his parents then sent to a school for troubled kids.
Gene Hackman left Iowa to enlist in the Marines at 16. Harrison Ford was a carpenter and stagehand before he was Han Solo. And Texas native Tommy Lee Jones made it to Harvard — but only with the help of a need-based scholarship.
This year’s Oscar nominees show a somewhat mixed assortment of backgrounds.
Supporting actress contender grew up as the daughter of a maid in Alabama, and a recent New Yorker profile of nominee Viola Davis revealed she grew up destitute. But supporting actor nominees Jeff Bridges and Lucas Hedges probably made their way to acting more easily: Bridges is the son of two actors and Hedges’ father is the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of About a Boy.