Calls Grow to Boycott Oscars over Lack of Diversity

A growing number of actors in Hollywood are calling for a boycott of the Academy Awards over the lack of diversity among this year's Oscar nominees.

No black or minority actors were nominated in the four acting categories this year, marking the second year in a row.

The backlash is putting pressure on the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences -- whose president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, is an African American woman -- to diversify its overwhelmingly white male membership.

Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a campaign encouraging people not to watch the Feb. 28 telecast.

Director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith said they will not attend the ceremony in protest.

"Feb. 28, we'll be at the world's most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, to see my beloved orange and blue hopefully beat the Miami Heat," Lee said on "Good Morning America." "I'm going to the game."

"Selma" star David Oyelowo also added his frustration to the controversy.

"This institution doesn't reflect its president," he said. "I am an Academy member and it doesn't reflect me. It doesn't reflect this nation."

Issacs, the Academy's first black president, praised the "wonderful work" of the nominees but said she was "heartbroken" at the lack of diversity.

Chris Rock is set to host the Academy Awards but is facing pressure to bow out. He has been mostly quiet on the issue.

But Whoopi Goldberg, of ABC's "The View," said "boycotting doesn't work, and it's also a slap in the face to Chris Rock."

"It's not that the problem is that the people who are nominated are too white," added Goldberg, who received two Academy Award nominations for "The Color Purple" and "Ghost," winning for the latter.

"They're not looking at a movie and saying, 'Oh, that's very white. I'm not going to nominate that black movie.' They're not sitting there like that!" Goldberg, 60, said during the live show.

"What the problem is the people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that - that movie doesn't come to you because the idea is that there's no place for black movies," she concluded.