LOS ANGELES — Hollywood director Michael Bay told jurors at Phil Spector's murder trial Monday that he did not deliver a party snub that the music legend's defense claims drove an actress to suicide.

Bay, director of such blockbusters as "The Rock," "Armageddon" and "Transformers," directly contradicted the testimony of a defense witness who told jurors last month that Lana Clarkson was despondent before her death because the director "dissed" her at a music industry party.

Bay acknowledged that he went to the Hollywood Hills fete about two weeks before Clarkson's fatal shooting, but he insisted that he did not see the 6-foot blonde, with whom he had worked on a car commercial, in the crowd of 400. (VIDEO)

"If, in fact, you saw Ms. Clarkson at a party, would you have recognized her?" Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson said.

"Absolutely," Bay said.

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"Even if she were standing across the room?" the prosecutor pressed.

"Absolutely," Bay said.

Bay said he liked Clarkson, 40, because she was "vivacious and funny" and would have welcomed the chance to speak with her.

"If I disrespected her, she probably would have slapped me," he said, adding that Clarkson was "saucy" and "had no qualms about coming right up to someone."

Spector, 67, watched without expression as Bay testified. He claims Clarkson shot herself in his foyer and his defense called a string of her friends to the stand to testify that she was depressed in the months and weeks before her death.

One of those friends, Punkin Irene Elizabeth Laughlin, a club promoter who goes by the name Punkin Pie, said Clarkson was desperate for work when she approached Bay at the party. Laughlin said Clarkson returned in tears and reported that the director did not recognize her.

Bay, however, described a cordial relationship with Clarkson. He got to know her in 1998, he said, when he directed a Mercedes ad in which she played a car inspector. He said he had a vague recollection of casting her in a second television spot and had occasionally run into her in social settings over the years.

Two months before her death, she sent him a Christmas card with a box of chocolates and her acting reel, "Lana Unleashed."

"I didn't even look at it," he admitted.

He was shocked to see her picture in the newspaper, however, following her death. "Instantly, my heart was like, 'Oh my God!'" he said.