The three-time Bafta-winner was talking about the shift in social attitudes that has come in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements when he made the comments on Newsnight.
Richard Curtis, the prolific screenwriter behind Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral, has said he would write “different” films in today’s political climate.
Numerous TV shows and films have been put under the microscope since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, with Peep Show, Little Britain and Gone With the Wind all criticised for either containing blackface or problematic representations of race.
He added: “We are all recalibrating, we are all thinking about things in different ways.