Kate Beckinsale just revisited some woefully sexist comments that will probably make your blood boil

Kate was speaking on The Graham Norton Show

Suffice to say, we've got a bit of a girl crush on Kate Beckinsale. It might be (read: it definitely is) something to do with her acting chops, or it might be how totally lovely and brilliant she seems in interviews, or maybe it's something to do with her being the ultimate prankster - seriously, she travels with a pantomime horse outfit. Either way, did we mention we're massive - huge! - Beckinsale fans? So you can imagine our ire on hearing (again) what her Pearl Harbour director Michael Bay said about Kate when they worked together in 2001.

During Kate's appearance on The Graham Norton Show last Friday (although the exchange didn't actually make to the live show in the end), she revisited an incident with her then-director as she and movie's other stars Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck were on the promotional trail for the big-budget wartime epic.

She told Graham Norton, 'When we were promoting the film Michael was asked why he had chosen Ben [Affleck] and Josh [Hartnett], and he said, "I have worked with Ben before and I love him, and Josh is so manly and a wonderful actor." Then when he was asked about me, he'd say, "Kate wasn't so attractive that she would alienate the female audience."'

Sorry, what? Never one to miss a trick though, Kate quipped that Bay - who has directed a number of big budget movies in the past, including Armageddon and Transformers - was probably 'baffled' by her because her 'boobs weren't bigger than [her] head' and that she 'wasn't blonde.' Kate went on to explain that she thought Bay might have been confused by her because she 'didn't fit the type of actress [he] had met before'.

Amazingly this isn't even the first, or only time that Michael has made a comment in this vein. On the same press tour in 2001 he told Vanity Fair that he didn't want someone who was 'too beautiful' in Pearl Harbour, and that 'women feel disturbed when they see someone's too pretty.'

(Sorry, we're beginning to run out of words to convey our disbelief at this point.)

We can't decide what's more offensive, the suggestion that women can't cope with watching attractive women on film, or the fact Michael Bay thinks that über babe Kate Beckinsale isn't that attractive.

Maybe Bay needs glasses, as well as a massive attitude adjustment?