Sexism strikes again. During an interview with Marie Claire UK, Oscar winner and “Jackie” star Natalie Portman revealed that her “No Strings Attached” co-star, Ashton Kutcher, was paid three-times what she was for the movie.
Portman blamed the disparity on an inflated asking price for Kutcher, which was based on his “quote,” or what agents presume is a star’s projected worth.
“I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood,” Portman said. “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. Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar. In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”
This issue of agents’ quotes has come up before. Usually, stars have set minimums that their agents will accept for a project. The stars don’t always know these quotes, or ask, but women’s quotes are often much lower than men’s.
As one anonymous female Hollywood agent explained to Cosmopolitan, “Quotes are whatever [the actor] made before. They will do their research ahead of time: ‘Well, what are their quotes?’ And sometimes we’ll give them and sometimes we won’t, depending on our strategy. If it’s a small indie but we want a client to do it, and it’s a million-dollar indie, we don’t want to say, ‘Well, she made $5 million on her last movie.’ Because then they might not come.”
But, the agent points out, while there are many women who are firm in their expected payday and will walk away from a project, there are more women who who will listen to their team and cave to their agents’ urges. “The real issue is women don’t have the luxury to hold out, because if they hold out, then what are they going to do? Are they going to not work for the rest of the year? If they don’t work for the rest of the year, they’re not in demand.”
Jennifer Lawrence, who famously wrote of her own experience with unequal pay on the film “American Hustle,” came up in Cosmo’s interview as well: “In terms of what she could do, in some ways, the deeper issue is how much she and women are valued as a whole. It’s like, ‘Oh, well, we can always just get another actress.’ [Whereas] with Leonardo DiCaprio you think, ‘There’s no one like him.’ But Jennifer Lawrence, you just get someone else. Women all across the board are just not valued,” the agent said.
Frances McDormand addressed the issue around the same time as Lawrence. While at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, she noted that she’s only received her going quote once in her entire career, for her role in “Transformers 3."
“I worked very hard for that money, I’m very proud of my work. I’m glad I did that film and I’m proud that I finally got paid what I was told I was worth by the industry,” she said. “But that is nothing. That is a tenth of what most males my age, with my experience and my reputation as a film actor make. We’ve never been paid commensurately and that has to change.”
With an Oscar under her belt and a potential second, or at least a nomination, coming up, there’s no way in hell Portman would be offered a third of Kutcher’s salary any longer. But women have to keep standing up for themselves and demanding better. Most recently Emmy Rossum demanded equal pay for “Shameless” and won. It’s hard to figure out salaries when actresses might not be privy to the information of a co-star, but it must be done if the industry is going to achieve equality.
