Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has worked with many women throughout his eclectic career and made some of the most female-centric films coming out of Europe. Now at the Cannes Film Festival to promote his latest picture, “Julieta,” which stars Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suárez, Almodóvar had some choice words for the sexism that plagues the industry.

“Hollywood is losing an enormous opportunity when it doesn’t actually create these good roles for women of all ages,” said Almodóvar, as reported by Variety. “When it doesn’t actually create good roles to talk about mothers, about girlfriends, about daughters, about sister-in-laws.”

Big Hollywood studios, he believes, have one purpose for their female characters.

“We’ve got all of these movies that are about heroes and about arch-enemies, and there’s the sequels and there’s the prequels,” said Almodóvar. “With those movies, in general, and I’m only generalizing, if a woman appears, their function is to prove that the hero is not a homosexual.”

Almodóvar noted that, while it’s natural that middle-aged actresses like Suárez, Isabelle Huppert, and Juliette Binoche should continue to get starring film roles, in the U.S. it seems virtually impossible. He remarked that may be why actresses like Jessican Lange and Susan Sarandon turn to TV and theater.

“There’s a kind of diabolical sexism, and I say that it’s diabolical because there’s no one that we can actually accuse of being responsible for this sexism,” he said. “The roles are out there for someone like Meryl Streep, but they’re not out there for the others.”

Streep was actually supposed to appear in “Julieta,” which was originally planned as his first English-language film to be shot in the U.S. “At the last minute I felt insecure,” Almodóvar said. Hopefully the two will collaborate in the future.