Posted on February 24, 2016

Charlotte Rampling’s Date With Oscar Got a Little Complicated

Ruth La Ferla, New York Times, February 24, 2016

“I’m shy.”

This from Charlotte Rampling, the Oscar-nominated actress who, since her breakout performance a half-century ago as the chillingly self-involved Meredith in “Georgy Girl,” has rarely missed an opportunity to let you know what’s on her mind.

Yes, that Charlotte Rampling, who in the 1970s shocked moviegoers when she played a concentration camp survivor in a sadomasochistic relationship with a former Nazi officer; who vamped in the buff for Helmut Newton and, some 30 years later, did it again for Juergen Teller–shot naked, at 63, alongside a much younger model–in a Marc Jacobs campaign.

She is that vociferous champion of feminism and apparent libertine who earlier in her career scandalized fans by implying in an interview that she was engaged in a lusty ménage à trois.

And who only last month, in the wake of her best actress nomination for “45 Years,” declared on French radio that a proposed boycott of the Oscars would be “racist against whites.” Her apparently unthinking, disastrously timed remarks uncorked torrents of vitriol on Twitter and threatened to upend her chances on Sunday of taking home Hollywood’s most coveted prize. {snip}

The furor over her comments was the fat elephant on the wraparound terrace outside the penthouse suite at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Calif., where earlier this month Ms. Rampling, 70, welcomed visitors.

Under the vigilant eye of her publicist Lauren Schwartz, who never left her side, Ms. Rampling replied stoically to a question about the slim chance, in the wake of her lapse, that she would make off with an Oscar.

She had held out the hope, it seemed, that the highly charged matter would never come up. A stony silence followed the question, during which Ms. Rampling exchanged furtive glances with Ms. Schwartz, before venturing, with a perceptible shrug: “What will be, will be. I’ve done my bit.”

{snip}