David Oyelowo has admitted he had to move to America in a bid to further his acting career due to a lack of black roles available in Britain.
David Oyelowo
Born in Oxford in southern England, he felt he had to "get out" of the country after his idea for a period drama was rejected, with a black actor set to take the leading role.
Moving to Los Angeles he's since gone on to play Martin Luther King Jr. in biographical movie Selma.
Speaking to Radio Times magazine he explained: "We make period dramas [in Britain], but there are almost never black people in them, even though we've been on these shores for hundreds of years,
"I remember taking a historical drama with a black figure at its centre to a British executive with greenlight power, and what they said was that if it's not Jane Austen or Dickens, the audience don't understand.
"And I thought, 'OK - you are stopping people having a context for the country they live in and you are marginalising me. I can't live with that. So I've got to get out.' "
David admits he was left "frustrated" by the leading roles and has called for the industry to make some big changes.
"There's a string of black British actors passing through where I live now in LA. We don't have 'Downton Abbey', or 'Call the Midwife', or 'Peaky Blinders', or the 50th iteration of 'Pride and Prejudice'. We're not in those. And it's frustrating because it doesn't have to be that way. I shouldn't have to feel like I have to move to America to have a notable career."
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