Harriet Walker: He's right – and we should be proud of them

Equating sensuality with nudity is a synecdoche, for one thing, and if a role calls for wanton nudity and writhing, then Paul Breuls was right not to knock on the door of any one of our bright young things. Britain has

talented young actresses whose bents run to much more than taking their clothes off.

In certain circles of European cinemocracy there is a sense an actress isn't an actress if she won't play up her sex appeal. But here and in the US, the more nudity there is in a film, the less seriously it is taken. It's a matter of cultural archetypes: for example, most French films feature an old man who beds a woman young enough to be his carer, whereas we Lutherans don't tend to be interested in such magical realism. Directors seeking women for hyper-sexualised roles need to ask themselves whether they want an actress or a lump of meat. Getting one's kit off hardly counts as an audition.