‘Whiteout’ Oscars boycott prompts Academy pledge to double women and minority members by 2020

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday promised sweeping reforms designed to help diversify its membership in the face of a major controversy over the second straight year of all-white Oscar acting nominations.

The Academy’s board said it was taking “historic action” to double the number of women and minority members by 2020 and launch a global effort to “recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity”.

“These new measures regarding governance and voting will have an immediate impact and begin the process of significantly changing our membership composition,” said Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

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The changes were approved in a unanimous vote by the Academy’s board of governors on Thursday, following days of criticism that for a second year in a row, all 20 actors nominated for Oscars were white.

Acclaimed director Spike Lee, who won an Oscar last year honouring his lifetime achievements, wrote an open letter to the Academy decrying the “lily white” nominations.

Actor Will Smith – one of the black actors seen by some as having been passed over for a nomination this year – and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith followed Lee in announcing that they too would stay away from the ceremony on February 28.

On Friday, British actress Charlotte Rampling – nominated for best actress for 45 Years – waded into the row by saying Lee had been “racist to whites” in his criticism.