Elizabeth Banks wishes Charlie's Angels hadn't been marketed as 'feminist manifesto'

Elizabeth Banks regrets the way 'Charlie's Angels' was marketed.

The 48-year-old actress - who directed and appeared alongside leading trio Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska in the 2019 reboot - has reflected on the movie's poor performance at the box office, and the way it was presented to potential customers.

Speaking to the New York Times newspaper, she said: "It was very stressful, partly because when women do things in Hollywood it becomes this story.

"There was a story around ‘Charlie’s Angels’ that I was creating some feminist manifesto. I was just making an action movie.

"[I] would’ve liked to have made ‘Mission: Impossible,’ but women aren’t directing ‘Mission: Impossible.' "

Banks - who has also directed the likes of 'Pitch Perfect 2' and upcoming thriller 'Cocaine Bear' - explained she wanted to make a different movie but was restrained by the representation of women in Hollywood.

She added: "I was able to direct an action movie, frankly, because it starred women and I’m a female director, and that is the confine right now in Hollywood.

"I wish that the movie had not been presented as just for girls, because I didn’t make it just for girls.

"There was a disconnect on the marketing side of it for me."

'Charlie's Angels' first started as a TV series in the 1970s before jumping to the big screen in 2000 with a sequel 'Full Throttle' released three years later.

Now, Banks feels like she is in a "rarefied category" by being a female filmmaker, but she can't assess whether the industry is becoming more accepting.

She said: “I’m putting my head down and showing these big corporations that if they give women the opportunity to do this job, they can make a good product that can make them a profit.

“It’s a male-dominated industry. It’s a male-dominated world. That’s what I’m up against, but I can’t solve it, and I don’t really want to analyse it.”