Jerry Lewis repeats his distaste for female comics

CANNES, France (AP) - Ladies? Don't make him laugh.

Asked who his favorite female comics were Thursday at a Cannes Film Festival press conference, Jerry Lewis listed Cary Grant and Burt Reynolds. He then added: "I don't have any."

In 1998, Lewis famously said that watching women do comedy "sets me back a bit" and that he has trouble with the notion of would-be mothers as comedians.

Asked Thursday if he had changed his mind at all because of performers like Melissa McCarthy and Sarah Silverman, the 87-year-old Lewis said of women performing broad comedy: "I can't see women doing that. It bothers me."

"I cannot sit and watch a lady diminish her qualities to the lowest common denominator," he said. "I just can't do that."

Lewis was in Cannes for the premiere of "Max Rose," a drama directed by Daniel Noah in which Lewis stars as an aging jazz musician.

In her 2011 memoir, "Bossypants," Tina Fey alluded to Lewis' attitudes about female comedians: "Whenever someone says to me, "Jerry Lewis says women aren't funny,' or "Christopher Hitchens says women aren't funny,' ... Do you have anything to say to that?'

"Yes," writes Fey. "We don't f------ care if you like it."