A little sunshine burns the suits
by digby
After leaked emails in the Sony hack showed unequal pay between male and female actors, Charlize Theron insisted she get the same pay as her male co-star Chris Hemsworth for “The Huntsman.”
She succeeded, netting a $10 million increase that puts her on par with Hemsworth.
The hacked emails unearthed significant pay gaps between male and female stars. For their work in the movie “American Hustle,” male actors Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and the director David O. Russell all got 9 percent of back-end profits, while Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, the movie’s two female leads, were each getting 7 percent. (Lawrence was originally going to get 5 percent but her pay had been raised.) At the time, Adams had been nominated for four Academy Awards, more than Renner and Cooper combined, and Lawrence had won one while also starring in the smash hit The Hunger Games. Perhaps worse, in the email exchange Sony Pictures Chairman Amy Pascal responded to the critique that the pay was unequal: “there is truth there.”
A pay gap was even revealed between staff at the studios themselves. Among 6,000 employees at Sony, just one of the 17 who made $1 million or more was a woman. And while Michael De Luca and Hannah Minghella have the same job as co-presidents of production at Columbia Pictures, De Luca makes nearly $1 million more.
I am not in favor of hacking, needless to say. But this revelation is important. It’s been an open secret in Hollywood for years but this may have made it impossible to pretend that it wasn’t so.
And on what planet can it possibly be true that Chris Hemsworth is worth 10 million dollars more than Charlize Theron? It’s ridiculous.
(I actually can’t believe anyone is worth that kind of money but that’s a different subject … )
.