20 Times Acting Gigs Paid Men A Lot More Than Their Female Co-Stars
So you dream of being an actress? Well, it can be a fantastic career choice! You get to meet new people, mingle with the ultra-rich and famous – there are all kinds of perks. But at the end of the day it’s still a job – one that might not necessarily pay as well as you think. Despite everything, even a very famous actress might one day discover her male co-star was being paid more for less screen time. Imagine how you’d feel! So these 20 actresses decided they weren’t going to take it.
To be fair, Harrison Ford is Han Solo and Daisy Ridley was very much a newcomer in the first Star Wars sequel. But… it’s hard to deny Ridley did a lot more work, since she was pretty much the main character of the movie. And yet Ford was apparently paid a massive 76 times more than her, seven figures to her six.
According to a Variety magazine report in 2015 Ford was paid about $25 million to play Han Solo again. Ridley, on the other hand, got somewhere in the range of $100k-$300k, as did her fellow newcomer John Boyega. Apparently Disney had a system where they remunerated Star Wars alumni more by default using a “legacy pay scale” – but Ford banked lots more than Carrie Fisher, as well.
Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, having already starred together in Silver Linings Playbook, teamed up again for American Hustle. But that movie was marked by a pay scandal, one that only came to light after hackers who targeted the studio, Sony, published emails containing details of the stars’ wages. Lawrence had been paid less than Cooper – even though she was the one with the Oscar.
Lawrence wrote an essay about the pay disparity in October 2015. She said she “didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself,” because she had “failed as a negotiator.” Cooper responded by saying to Reuters, “Usually you don’t talk about the financial stuff, you have people. But you know what? It’s time to start doing that,” and pledging to help actresses get equal pay.
