PARIS — Charlotte Rampling, an Academy Award nominee for best actress, on Friday waded into the furor over the lack of diversity in the Oscar acting categories, saying that the supposed calls to boycott the ceremony were “racist against whites.”

Speaking fluent French in an interview with France’s Europe 1 radio, the British actress said that one would “never really know” how the Academy makes its decisions, and that “sometimes maybe black actors didn’t deserve to make the shortlist.”

This week, the director Spike Lee and the actress Jada Pinkett Smith said they would not be attending the Feb. 28 Oscars ceremony in protest of the all-white slate of acting nominees. Mr. Lee later clarified that he was not calling for a boycott, but he suggested that Hollywood studios institute a policy similar to the N.F.L.’s requirement that teams interview minority candidates for head coach and senior staff jobs.

Ms. Rampling — who is a member of the Academy and thus eligible to vote on Oscar awards — said she disagreed with quotas. “We live now in countries where anyway people are more or less accepted,” she said. “There are always problems: ‘He’s less handsome’ or ‘He’s too black’ or ‘He’s too white.’ There will always, always be someone who will say, ‘Oh, you’re too ….’ What are we going to do? We’re going to classify all that to create thousands of little minorities everywhere?”