Hollywood heroines 'vapid and neurotic'

Heroines have been getting "dumber and dumber" in the 50 years since Audrey Hepburn and Bette Davis blazed a trail for strong on-screen women, according to Dr Diane Purkiss of Keble College.

Recent female leads make Bridget Jones, the scatterbrained singleton played by Rene Zellweger in 2001, look like a model of female independence, the feminist historian claimed.

"It's a sad day when you look back at Bridget Jones with some affection," she said.

"We really have reached a nadir in the way women are portrayed on screen," she said.

Releases including What Happens in Vegas – starring Diaz – 27 Dresses and Made of Honour were particularly guilty of reducing women to "explicitly anti-feminist stereotypes".

But Dr Purkiss also pointed to Bafta-nominated performances from Winslet in The Reader and Revolutionary Road, Angelina Jolie in Changeling and Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long as evidence of the decline of fully-formed female characters in films.