Wednesday 22 June 2022 11:53 PM Acting has been hijacked by the privileged as upper-class stars are given ... trends now
67
View
comments
Acting has been ‘hijacked’ by people from ‘exceptionally privileged backgrounds’, a historian claims.
Author Lipika Pelham says today’s younger generation of A-listers is ‘typically represented’ by ‘Eddie Redmayne, who was at Eton with Prince William’, and ‘Benedict Cumberbatch, a distant cousin of Richard III’.
‘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’.
