Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss is outraged by the Oscars’ new diversity and inclusion requirements.

Speaking with Margaret Hoover on PBS’ Firing Line, Dreyfuss — who took home the statue in 1978 for his performance in The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated for a second Oscar in 1996 for Mr. Holland’s Opus — railed against the Academy’s new standards.

“They make me vomit,” Dreyfuss said.

After being first announced in 2020, the new standards will be implemented for the first time in next year’s Oscars. The rules state that a film must meet at least two out of four diversity benchmarks in order to be considered for Best Picture. An example of one of the standards, titled “on-screen representation, themes or narrative,” requires that either a film’s lead or significant supporting actor must come from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, or 30 percent of the entire ensemble cast is comprised of two underrepresented groups.

Dreyfuss panned the new requirements.

“It’s an art,” Dreyfuss said. “And no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is. And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life. And I’m sorry. I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

The actor added, “Laurence Olivier was the last white actor to play Othello, and he did it in 1965, and he did it in blackface. And he played a black man brilliantly. Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art? This is so patronizing. It’s so thoughtless, and treating people like children.”

Watch above, via PBS.

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