Michael Caine has taken an adversarial position in the debate over black representation among this year’s Oscar nominees. The controversy, embodied in the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, is about the complete lack—for two years running—of black acting nominees.

Speaking with BBC Radio 4, Michael Caine responded to the idea that not enough black actors are being nominated for Academy Awards.

“Yeah, but there’s loads of black actors.” Caine said. “You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to vote for him. He’s not very good, but he’s black. I’ll vote for him.’ You have to give a good performance.”

Michael Caine on 2016 Oscars Boycott

While Caine is at odds with the celebrities calling for an Oscars boycott, he also made it clear that he hasn’t been keeping up with the 2016 Oscar race generally.

“I don’t know whether Idris got [nominated],” EW reports Caine as saying, “I saw Idris, and I thought he was wonderful. I thought he would get—did he not get nominated?”

After hearing that Elba had not been nominated for his performance in Beasts of No Nation, Caine stood by his basic position, telling the BBC, “Well, look at me. I won the [European Film Award] for best actor, and I got nominated for nothing else…The great thing about it is you don’t have to go.”

But it was Caine’s last response to the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominees that may well prove most galling to non-white actors for its unintentional mirroring of 60’s talking points adversarial to the Civil Rights Movement. “Be patient,” Caine said. “Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.”