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.

20. Daisy Ridley, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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.

19. Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

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.

18. Natalie Portman, No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached was a fun little rom-com starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. They had pretty much equal amounts of screentime, but Kutcher got paid a lot more. Portman revealed what happened in a 2017 interview with Marie Claire magazine. She said, “I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood.”

Portman said Kutcher’s “quote” was simply higher than hers, so “they said he should get three times more.” She wasn’t angry about it, she added, but she went on, “I mean, we get paid a lot, so it’s hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy. Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar. In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”

17. Angelina Jolie, Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Obviously Brangelina were Hollywood’s biggest power couple once upon a time. But despite both of them ruling Hollywood and making big box office, one still got paid more than the other. Indeed, when they starred alongside each other in the spy movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt made double what Jolie was pulling in.

Jolie – who’s split from Brad Pitt now – has never directly addressed that she made less than him for that film. But because she’s a campaigner for women’s rights, she’s brought up the pay disparity issue in general. In 2020 she wrote an essay for Time magazine where she spoke of the need for women to have “equal pay and full representation in society.”

16. Ellen Pompeo, Grey’s Anatomy

It’s a bit weird to not pay your title character more than her love interest, right? Ellen Pompeo thought so too. She revealed to The Hollywood Reporter magazine in 2018 that Patrick Dempsey was paid more than her on Grey’s Anatomy – and furthermore, that producers used to tell her, “We don’t need you; we have Patrick.”

Pompeo went on, “At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Meredith Grey. They wouldn’t give it to me,” she continues. “And I could have walked away, so why didn’t I? It’s my show; I’m the number one. I’m sure I felt what a lot of these other actresses feel: Why should I walk away from a great part because of a guy?”

15. Halle Berry, Swordfish

Black women are even more likely than white women to be paid less than their male co-stars. Just ask Halle Berry. When she starred alongside John Travolta in the 2001 movie Swordfish, having already won an Emmy and a Golden Globe at that point, she made $2.5 million. He, on the other hand, bagged $20 million.

When the movie came out, the director Dominic Sena claimed that Berry had been paid more for appearing nude in the film. This was widely reported in the entertainment media, but Berry herself told Entertainment Weekly magazine that the director had made the remark in jest. She might not have found it very funny, though.

14. Gillian Anderson, The X-Files

Can you even imagine The X-Files without Gillian Anderson? And yet, throughout the first seasons of the original series she was paid less than David Duchovny. To really hammer the point home that their characters weren’t meant to be equals, Anderson even had to trail a few paces behind him when their characters were walking.

Then in 2015 the revival series came along… And Anderson was still offered less than Duchovny to reprise her role. She told Vanity Fair magazine in January 2016, “My response [to the equal pay issue] was ‘That was then, this is now.’ And then it happened again! I don’t even know what to say about it.”

13. Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman

Surely Julia Roberts must have been paid more than Richard Gere for Pretty Woman? It’s the movie that made her a superstar, after all. Well, no, she wasn’t. While her co-star got millions of dollars, she received only $300,000. While that’s a huge amount of money to a lot of people, it’s small numbers in Hollywood.

In 2015 after Jennifer Lawrence published her piece on the pay gap, Roberts was asked on Good Morning America what she thought about the issue. She told the breakfast TV show, “I think it’s great to go, ‘Excuse me. Over here. I know something now and I’m frustrated by it and why is this?’” Or in other words, the message to those controlling the financial purse strings is clearly, “Big mistake. Huge!”

12. Claire Foy, The Crown

Scandal hit the set of The Crown in 2018. That year it was revealed that Claire Foy was paid less than Matt Smith for her role on the show, even though she was the main character, Queen Elizabeth II, and he was playing her husband, Prince Philip. People were absolutely outraged when the news broke.

One tweet on the matter said, “Claire Foy got paid less than Matt Smith for The Crown. THE GODDAMN QUEEN CAN’T EVEN GET EQUAL PAY.” A month later Smith told journalists at the Tribeca Film Festival, “I believe that we all should be paid equally and fairly. Claire is one of my best friends. I support her completely.”

11. Diane Keaton, Something’s Gotta Give

People might not have known about the Something’s Gotta Give pay disparity if Diane Keaton hadn’t written about it in her 2011 memoir Then Again. She said that she didn’t have a “back-end deal” in her contract, which meant her co-star Jack Nicholson got paid more even though she was the lead.

Still, the story actually has a nice ending. Keaton also wrote in her book that two years after the movie wrapped she received a check “with a lot of zeroes” and no explanations. She called up her agent and was told Nicholson had shared 50 percent of his back-end earnings from Something’s Gotta Give with her.

10. Ruth Wilson, The Affair

Ruth Wilson’s racked up a great many accolades during her career, but she was paid less than Dominic West for the show The Affair. She told the Radio Times magazine in 2018 that because West had previously been in the massive hit The Wire, “even after a Golden Globe I’m not going to be on parity.”

West himself spoke out after the pay gap came to light. He told the Channel 4 News show, “In fact [Wilson] should get paid more because she won a Golden Globe for the part. There was absolutely no reason for her to get paid less than me, and that’s part of what is being hopefully confronted now. You can’t get away with it any more, and there’s no reason why a producer should get away with that.”

9. Emmy Rossum, Shameless

In 2016 The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Shameless star Emmy Rossum was “locked in a pay stand-off” with the show’s producers, because she wanted wage equality with her male co-star William H. Macy. He’d been paid more than her right from the beginning. And Macy supported Rossum in her fight.

That year Macy told the website TMZ, “She works as hard as I do. She deserves everything.” Though he did jokingly add, “The only thing I’ve got over Emmy Rossum is I’m better looking.” In the end, Rossum won her battle. She got more money than Macy, to make up for the years she had been underpaid.

8. Amy Adams, American Hustle

As we’ve already touched upon, neither Jennifer Lawrence nor Amy Adams fared well with the film American Hustle, with both women getting paid less than their male co-stars. And when Lawrence wrote an essay about the issue, Adams supported her. She told GQ magazine in 2016, “I’m really proud of Jennifer. What I liked is that [the essay] was not necessarily about getting paid, or not getting paid… It’s like we [women] have been conditioned to not be controversial, to not cause problems.”

In the same interview Adams said pointedly, “I knew I was being paid less and I still agreed to do it because the option comes down to do it or don’t do it. So you just have to decide if it’s worth it for you. It doesn’t mean I liked it.” In later interviews she expressed desire to continue the fight for equal pay.

7. Kathy Griffin, Suddenly Susan

Kathy Griffin has been very open about her pay for Suddenly Susan. In 2015 she told Variety that she made “the second-lowest salary on the cast,” and went on, “Judd Nelson, who I liked, made four times what I made, and he ended up getting fired. And I went on to get two Emmys, a Grammy, three television shows with my name in the title and a New York Times bestseller.”

Griffin also said she didn’t think the problem was improving, at least not for older women. She told the publication, “If you’re a woman and you think your agency is going to have your back, think again… I’ve never been paid what the guys get. No, it’s not getting better for me. It might be getting better for Jennifer Lawrence. But I’m not 25 and a movie star.”

6. Gwyneth Paltrow, Iron Man

Gwyneth Paltrow may not actually be the eponymous hero of Iron Man, but she was still absolutely vital to the plot of that movie and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. In 2015 with three Iron Man movies under her belt already, she told Variety, “Your salary is a way to quantify what you’re worth. If men are being paid a lot more for doing the same thing, it feels [bad].”

Paltrow went on, “Look, nobody is worth the money that Robert Downey Jr. is worth. But if I told you the disparity, you would probably be surprised.” And Paltrow’s Iron Man co-star Downey Jr. also got paid more than anyone else for the franchise movie Avengers: Endgame, in which Paltrow also appeared.

5. Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Taraji P. Henson got an Academy Award nomination for her performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but you wouldn’t have guessed from looking at her salary that she was even meant to be an important part of the film: she earned a comparatively small $150,000 pay packet. She discussed this with Variety in 2019.

Henson said, “I’m not saying [co-stars] shouldn’t get what they’re getting. I was just asking for half a million – that’s all. That’s it. When I was doing Benjamin Button I wasn’t worth a million yet. My audience was still getting to know me. We thought we were asking for what was fair for me, at the time.” Asked what things were like now, she said, “Still a fight. I don’t get paid if I don’t fight.”

4. Charlize Theron, Snow White and the Huntsman

After the aforementioned dramatic hack into Sony’s servers, details of female vs male pay were revealed. That seemed to spur on some actresses to demand equal pay for upcoming projects, and Charlize Theron was one of them. She hadn’t been paid the same as Chris Hemsworth in their movie Snow White and the Huntsman, but a prequel was coming.

An anonymous insider told the website Page Six, “Charlize insisted that she get paid the same money as Chris. She has a great track record, so she got the same deal.” And a second source said, “One knock-on effect from the Sony hacking scandal is that there will be more sensitivity about equal pay for actresses and hiring practices at movie studios.”

3. Jessica Chastain, The Martian

In 2015 Jessica Chastain spoke to the website HuffPost about her role in The Martian. A report had claimed she made $7 million on the movie – still $18 million less than her co-star Matt Damon – but it turned out it was less than that. Chastain confirmed she had actually made only 25 percent of what had been reported.

Chastain also said regarding the gender gap in general, “Women can talk about it, [but] it actually moves me a lot to hear men talk about it as well. I think the film industry is an incredible group of people... And so the more that we all discuss it as a community, that’s what I think is going to help.”

2. Sienna Miller, 21 Bridges

After Chadwick Boseman’s tragic early death, his co-star Sienna Miller shared a story about how he helped her get equal pay for the movie 21 Bridges. In 2020 she told Empire magazine that Boseman, who also co-produced the film, donated some of his own salary to bridge the pay gap between them.

Miller remembered, “It was about the most astounding thing that I’ve experienced. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. He said, ‘You’re getting paid what you deserve, and what you’re worth.’ It's just unfathomable to imagine another man in that town behaving that graciously or respectfully… But there was no showiness, it was, ‘Of course I’ll get you to that number, because that’s what you should be paid.’”

1. Michelle Williams, All the Money in the World

The production of All the Money in the World was a troubled one. After the movie wrapped, the Kevin Spacey scandal hit and it was decided some scenes should be reshot. And then news came out about how much Michelle Williams was being paid in comparison to Mark Wahlberg. Despite their almost equal screen time, she was paid $625,000 whereas he scooped $5 million.

Added to that, there was a massive disparity between the money they were paid for reshoots too. Apparently Wahlberg got $1.5 million and William just a paltry $1,000. This news caused a massive outcry and Wahlberg ended up donating his extra money to the Time’s Up campaign, stating that he supported the fight for equal pay.