Most celebrities spend the weekend of the Oscars getting facials, peels, fillers and fittings to prep for the red carpet. But this year, a few select stars used the lead-up to Sunday’s Academy Awards to speak out against President Donald Trump.
Casey Affleck, a favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Manchester by the Sea, arrived at Saturday night’s Independent Spirit Awards, a more artistic alternative to the Academy Awards, in a shirt with the word “love” written on it in Arabic. After winning an award, Affleck used his acceptance speech to assail Trump’s policies as “abhorrent.”
“The policies of this administration are abhorrent, and they won’t last,” Affleck said. “You don’t have to clap out of obligation…They’re really un-American.”
Perennial awards show honoree—an unabashed progressive politico—George Clooney also took Trump to task for his “hate,” in a speech to the French Cesar Awards earlier in the weekend. “Love trumps hate. Courage trumps fear. … The actions of this president have caused alarm and dismay among our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies.”
Clooney, of course, supported Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election, bundling more than $300,000 for the Democratic nominee in a single Hollywood fundraiser.
Most interesting, perhaps, was United Talent Agency’s star-studded anti-Trump rally Saturday afternoon. The agency swapped out the pro-immigration demonstration for its annual glitzy Oscar party, and instead, invited award-winning actors Jodie Foster and Michael J. Fox to deliver impassioned speeches to an elite crowd of producers, directors and other celebrities.
Foster told the crowd that it was “time to show up,” referencing progressive activists’ newfound love for civil disobedience. “We will not tolerate chaos and ineptitude and war-mongering.”
Fox, who is a legal immigrant from Canada who negotated the American naturalization process and became a citizen 20 years ago, spoke of the “luck” of being able to come to the U.S.
“I consider myself an optimist and that can be a tall order at times for me personally, and more as I see a growing intolerance and lack of compassion and empathy in the world around us,” he told the audience. “But one’s dignity may be assaulted, it may be vandalized, it may be cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it’s surrendered.”
Protests are, of course, expected at the Oscars ceremony itself. The six directors nominated for Best Foreign Language film released a joint letter late Friday, criticizing insular political movements across the world. They condemned “the climate of fanaticism and nationalism we see today in the U.S. and in so many other countries, in parts of the population and, most unfortunately of all, among leading politicians.”
One of the six directors, Iranian Asghar Farhadi, is not attending the Oscars after being subject to Trump‘s temporary immigration ban on seven majority-Muslim countries.
Trump supporters in Hollywood say they’re also boycotting the ceremony, refusing to attend with “limousine liberals.” It’s not clear, however, how sizable a population that is. Conservative and libertarian-leaning actors are rare in Hollywood, and suffer such a threat of blacklisting that they meet in secret.
