1.
Nina Dobrev, who played Elena and several of her doppelgängers in The Vampire Diaries, recently revealed that she was paid less than her male co-leads Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley for the duration of her six-season run on the show. She said, “It was a bit of a tricky situation because my contract only said to play Elena, but I was playing multiple characters, which doubled my workload. I had to be on set for double the amount of time, I had to memorize double the amount of lines.”
2.
In 2014, Sony was hacked, and it came out that Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than Bradley Cooper for her work on American Hustle. At the time, she said, “I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or spoiled.'”
Jennifer was also paid $5 million less than her Don’t Look Up co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. She told Vanity Fair, “In other situations, what I have seen — and I’m sure other women in the workforce have seen as well — is that it’s extremely uncomfortable to inquire about equal pay. And if you do question something that appears unequal, you’re told it’s not gender disparity, but they can’t tell you what exactly it is.”
3.
Octavia Spencer revealed that when she was in negotiations for the Netflix series Self Made, based on the life of the first female Black millionaire Madame C.J. Walker, she had to get help from producer LeBron James to negotiate equal pay. Octavia said, “I think my goal is to make sure that all women of color get equal pay, and all women get equal pay. The only way to do it is to have these conversations, to talk numbers with your costars.”
4.
In 2019, Michelle Williams testified before Congress about her experiences with the gender pay gap. She revealed that she was paid less than $1,000 for reshoots for the movie All the Money in the World, while her co-star Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million. Michelle said, “I’ve been a working actress since the age of 12. I’ve been accredited by my industry at the highest levels, and that still didn’t translate to equal compensation.” For his part, Mark donated his salary to Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which offers assistance to people who’ve experienced sex-based discrimination at work.
5.
In 2017, Natalie Portman opened up about being paid three times less than her No Strings Attached co-star Ashton Kutcher. Natalie told Marie Claire U.K., “I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood. His [quote] was three times higher than mine, so they said he should get three times more. I wasn’t as pissed as I should have been. I mean, we get paid a lot, so it’s hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy.” She added, “Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar. In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”
6.
Jessica Chastain was reportedly paid $7 million for her role in The Martian, compared to Matt Damon’s $25 million. But she later told HuffPost that she was actually paid even less. Jessica said, ” I made less than a quarter of that in reality, so there is a huge wage gap in the industry.”
7.
Arden Cho, who played Kira Yukimura in the MTV series Teen Wolf, declined to return for the movie reunion due to pay disparities with her white co-stars as the show’s only female series regular of color. According to Deadline, she was offered “half the per-episode salary proposed to her three counterparts, leading to her decision to pass.”
8.
In 2016, Gillian Anderson revealed that she spent three years fighting for equal pay with David Duchovny during the original 1990s run of The X-Files. Then, when the series was revived, she says she was offered half of David’s pay to return. Gillian told the Daily Beast, “Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, ‘I can’t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane.’ And my response always was, ‘That was then, this is now.’ And then it happened again! I don’t even know what to say about it.” She was ultimately able to negotiate for equal pay for the series revival.
9.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas told BBC in 2022 that she has never received equal pay with a male co-star for her work in Bollywood films. “I’ve never had pay parity in Bollywood. I would get paid about 10% of the salary of my male co-actor,” Priyanka said. She went on to say, “I thought it was absolutely OK to sit for hours and hours on set, while my male co-actor just took his own time, and decided whenever he wanted to show up on set is when we would shoot.”
10.
In 2020, Riverdale‘s Vanessa Morgan tweeted, “I’m the only Black series regular but also paid the least.” In another post, she also spoke out about being “tired of how Black people are portrayed in media…tired of us also being used as sidekick non-dimensional characters to our white leads…Or only used in the ads for diversity but not actually in the show. It starts with the media. I’m not being quiet anymore.”
11.
In a 2017 Hollywood Reporter Roundtable, Emmy Rossum discussed reports that she wasn’t offered equal pay with her Shameless co-star William H. Macy until the show’s eighth season. Emmy held out until she was offered even more than William to make up for the years of pay disparity. Speaking about the negotiation, Emmy said, “As it was happening, I’ll tell you the person who supported me the most was William H. Macy. To have the man counterpart on my show be like, ‘Yes, she does deserve this and more’ was so validating.”
12.
Catt Sadler moved on from her role at E! News after an executive informed her that her co-host, Jason Kennedy, was being paid nearly double her salary. On The View, Catt said, “We started at the same time, 12 years ago. We had the same, for all intents and purposes, experience, skill sets, same public profile — for me, it was really apples to apples. And that’s why I just feel so strong in my conviction that what was happening was an injustice, and that’s why I felt very compelled to fight for what was right at the time.”
13.
Kirsten Dunst has shared that she earned less than her male co-stars in movies, including Jumanji and Bring It On. She told BBC, “I was very young and it just felt like at the time, what do you do? I was 17, I was still learning my taste in film. I didn’t even think to ask.” She has also spoken out about a “very extreme” pay disparity between herself and Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man movies.
14.
Charlize Theron made headlines in 2015 for taking a stand to get equal pay with her The Huntsman co-star Chris Hemsworth. She told Elle, “This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn’t mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you’re doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way.”
15.
Shortly after Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020, Sienna Miller revealed that he had taken a pay cut in their movie 21 Bridges in order to increase her compensation as his co-star. Sienna told Empire, “It’s just unfathomable to imagine another man in that town behaving that graciously or respectfully. In the aftermath of this I’ve told other male actor friends of mine that story and they all go very very quiet and go home and probably have to sit and think about things for a while. But there was no showiness, it was, ‘Of course I’ll get you to that number, because that’s what you should be paid.'”
16.
Ellen Pompeo has also shared that in early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, she was paid less than her McDreamy co-star Patrick Dempsey. In 2018, she told the Hollywood Reporter, “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. 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?”
17.
And finally, Viola Davis has also been outspoken about being paid less as a Black woman than white actors of a similar profile and experience. Speaking to InStyle, Viola said, “I want and I expect to get the same filet mignon that white actresses get. Cooked at the exact temperature. You cannot throw me a bone with a really nice little piece of meat still on it and expect that’s good enough for me.”
