Guillermo Del Toro loved Natalie Portman's 'all-male' director joke

Natalie Portman used her stage time at Sunday's Golden Globes to call out the gender inequality of directing in Hollywood, and The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro loved it.

Del Toro – who took the stage just seconds later to receive a directing award for The Shape of Water – told IndieWire that he loved his introduction.

“I think it was great!” he said. “She should say exactly what she feels. There is phenomenal work being done by female directors.”

Del Toro named some of the year's outstanding female directors, including Wonder Woman's Patty Jenkins, Lady Bird's Greta Gerwig (whose film won Best Picture, Musical or Comedy), and Mudbound's Dee Rees.

Portman threw all the perfectly-timed shade on Sunday when she joined Ron Howard to present the award for Best Director, Motion Picture.

"And here are the all-male nominees," Portman deadpanned.

Some criticized Portman choosing this particular moment to call out the glaring discrepancy; that it was a time for celebrating nominees' hard work.

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Others (many of them – with gifs) thought the timing was magnificent. By using her time as presenter, Portman guaranteed that the next five shots in the Golden Globes telecast would be of five male directors responding to their privilege.

“I have had projects where explicitly the studio has said, 'this is the limit of your budget because it’s a female character,'" Del Toro told IndieWire of Hollywood's pervasive sexism. "I still keep writing.”

h/t Entertainment Weekly