Actress Hayley Atwell accuses Baftas of sexism The famous mask trophies are still in their boxes and the champagne is on ice, but already the British Academy Film Awards have provoked a row. Hayley Atwell, the actress, has accused the film industry of sexism for failing to include any women on the shortlist of five for the Rising Star award. "There were girls on the longlist and I think it's really odd that girls haven't made it where guys have," said Atwell, who has appeared in films including Brideshead Revisited and Captain America. We'd hope that gender doesn't really come into it and it's about the body of work that they produce that year, but it seems that hasn't been the case. The longlist of eight included Jessica Chastain, Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence. Atwell, 29, said Jones, the former star of The Archers, deserved to have been shorlisted for her acclaimed performance in Like Crazy. "Felicity Jones should have been nominated," she said at a pre-Baftas dinner at the St Pancras Renaissance hotel in London. Meanwhile, Christopher Hampton, who wrote the scripts for films including Atonement and A Dangerous Method, said the academy would try to lift spirits in the economic downturn by giving awards to "uplifting" pictures at the ceremony, which will be held on Sunday night at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. "The films which will win this year will be the light-hearted ones," Hampton said at a party hosted by Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul, in Soho, London. Before, winners have been rather gloomy often. Everyone is feeling so gloomy, this year the uplifting films will be in favour. I reckon The Descendants will do very well. I'm not so sure that The Artist will pick up as many as people might expect.