What About 'The Color Purple'? Twitter Slams Elizabeth Banks For Steven Spielberg Diss

Accepting an award Tuesday at Women in Film's Crystal and Lucy Awards in Los Angeles, actress Elizabeth Banks called out director Steven Spielberg for failing to offer female-centered films. In fact, Spielberg directed and co-produced the Oscar-nominated film “The Color Purple,” which featured a cast of black women, including Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey — as Twitter quickly reminded Banks.

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In her acceptance speech, Banks expressed frustration with the lack of female-led films in Hollywood, citing Spielberg by name.

"I went to ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Jaws’ and every movie Steven Spielberg ever made, and by the way, he’s never made a movie with a female lead," Banks told the audience, according to The Wrap. "Sorry, Steven. I don’t mean to call your a-- out but it’s true."

She added: "Buy a f---ing ticket to a movie with a woman, take them, give them the experience of seeing amazing women on film."

Banks, the director of “Pitch Perfect 2” who prides herself on being “woke,” hadn't done her homework.

According to Spielberg's IMDb directorial profile, the filmmaker has developed at least three female-led films. In addition to “The Color Purple,” he directed 1974's “The Sugarland Express,” starring Goldie Hawn, and 2016's “The BFG,” led by 13-year-old actress Ruby Barnhill (along with actor Mark Rylance).

Spielberg’s next project is “The Papers,” set at the Washington Post newspaper; it stars Meryl Streep as the legendary Katharine Graham, the first woman publisher of a major newspaper. Tom Hanks plays editor Ben Bradlee and the film also features actresses Sarah Paulson and Alison Brie.

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Twitter reacted with criticism and creative insults when Banks’ comments got out.

Banks was wrong in claiming that Spielberg had not created a female-led film in his long career, but with just three or four women-centered projects out of more than 50 films, Spielberg has been criticized before.

In 2016, actress Juliette Binoche revealed during a panel at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival that she had confronted the director many years ago, Entertainment Weekly reported. Binoche said that after Spielberg was unreceptive to her comments about the lack of films driven by women characters, she turned down a role in his “Jurassic Park.”

“Saying no to certain films is as important as saying yes because it really defines you,” she said. “What I’ve been seeing is that I’ve been refusing roles, instinctively, out of the need to talk about the feminine. The feminine has to have its place. It needs space, and we don’t have the space, so we have to take it.”

Binoche told EW that she confronted filmmaker Martin Scorsese on this topic as well.

“He has a very feminine side of himself,” she said of the director. “But for me, he doesn’t explore it.”