Helen Mirren was wrong to blame Sam Mendes for the neglect of women in the film industry I don't want to unduly pick on Dame Helen Mirren, but her remarks last night, directed towards Sam Mendes at Empire magazine's film awards, were rather unfair. She was disappointed that, when he spoke about his inspirations, "not a single one of the people he mentioned was a woman." Mendes, who bagged Best Film, Best Director and the Inspiration awards for last year's Bond movie Skyfall, had name-checked, among others, Paul Thomas Anderson, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese and Ingmar Bergman. For instance, a couple of years ago, Bridesmaids and The Help were warmly welcomed by the critics and audiences, and the latter got four Oscar nods. These were films with a strong female input, in terms of the writing and/or source material, and featured almost exclusively female casts. However, in the year that those films were released, only 33 per cent of all characters in the 100 top-grossing films were female, and only 11 per cent were identifiable as protagonists. Among the makers of the 250 top-grossing releases in the same period, only 18 per cent were women. The Twilight series and what looks likely to be a fabulously successful ongoing Hunger Games franchise are powerfully feminine. And, last summer, the all-conquering animation studio, Pixar, released Brave, the first of its films with a female central character. Pixar has a strong tradition of employing women producers and animators. Hollywood may, at last, be waking up to the idea that more women should be in positions of power and allowed to hold the creative reins a bit more. The industry has neglected them for the whole of its history, and this is regrettable. But it's not Sam Mendes's fault.