Last year’s Sony hack disaster brought plenty of juicy tidbits. Kaiser covered the latest news about co-chairman Amy Pascal “resigning”. After her exit, Amy opened up at the Women in the World conference. I’m sure there were limits on what she could say, and the sweet severance package (which Kaiser talked about today) made it all worth it.
Amy did talk about the leaked information about American Hustle salaries. Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male co-stars even though — at the time — she was the biggest box-office draw of the bunch. Some of you disagreed, but the Hustle deal was inked immediately after the Hunger Games release. She was already in the successful X-Men franchise too. JLaw didn’t have as much screentime as the men or Amy Adams, but I see that as a minor point. Remember how Julia Roberts once got paid $3 million for 6 minutes of screentime? JLaw is as much of an attraction as Julia was in her heyday.
Amy says she didn’t agree with Jennifer making less money:
On the JLaw salary discrepancy: “I’ve paid [Jennifer Lawrence] a lot more money since then, I promise you. Here’s the problem: I run a business. People want to work for less money, I pay them less money … Women shouldn’t work for less money. They should know what they’re worth. Women shouldn’t take less. ‘Stop, you don’t need the job that bad.'”-
[From Hollywood Reporter]
Well … Amy didn’t say anything wrong here. Women shouldn’t work for less money than men make, period. If female actors don’t hold out for better deals, then studio execs will walk all over them. It’s difficult to put the onus onto actresses, who generally enjoy less job security and room for flops than male actors. But if Charlize Theron could demand equal pay from Sony, so could JLaw.
Photos courtesy of WENN
Funny how Amy says that yet the man with the same title as hers in Sony was paid substantially more than her for the same job.
It’s just because she didn’t ask for more, you know. Stupid us.
Exactly! what a hypocrite. But sadly a lot of women in power really don’t realize they are part of the problem.
Does an actor usually know what the other actors in the film will be making?
I don’t think.the salaries are a discussion between the agents and the production.
Do you talk about your salary with your colleagues?
i cant imagine the studios want other actors to know. that would lead to many to ask for more. it comes down mainly to what the agents do/how good they are at their jobs. being Jlaws agent right now shouldnt be the hardest thing in the world. she can pick, the studios want her and will do a lot to get her.
often it also comes with package deals. meaning that talent from one big agency gets parts in a movie. for example they want Jlaw as the main star and because of that they will agree to let to little know actors from the same agency have little roles in the movie.
I just don’t think it is that simple. There are very few Charlize Therons in Hollywood.
And notice how she talked about Jennifer Lawrence, because, she is also in a position where she too can demand equal pay and receive it.
I doubt if Amy Adams demanded more money (equal pay to actors with equal screen time), they would have given it to her. The studio would have laid claims on Christian Bale being a bigger box office star, Bradley Cooper has won an Oscar, Jeremey Remer action hero, etc.
Cooper never won Oscar until now.It’s Bale for The Fighter
mixed it up and couldnt change it… but same difference.
The point is that Pascal and the studio she lead offered less to the women/more to the men. That is where the problem begins. As the female lead, Amy Adams should not have to demand more, she should be offered the same as the two male leads.
In reality, Theron got a better deal because of the mess with Lawrence. Not sure if she would have been emboldened without the salary discrepancies described in the e-mails, which came first.
I hope that Theron is as well paid as Chris Hemsworth.She’s the one reason to watch the 1rst movie and she will be the lead with Thor guy in the second movie.
Does everyone think Emily Blunt is as well paid as Hemsworth or Theron?
Emily is not box office yet,although a wonderful actress.
I love Charlize and Emily both in roles, but Charlize is box office with several of the franchise films.
That’s assuming Amy, for example, knew what her 3 male costars were getting before she signed the contract. I’m highly doubtful that she did.
Gotta love that instead of the big corporation striving to pay employees equally for equal work, they’re putting all the responsibility on the employee, to know what everyone else is getting too and have to fight if they’re being underpaid.
Talk about lip service. Put your $$ where your mouth is, Amy.
JLaw looks beautiful, lost all the baby face and cheeks, looks a like grown woman. Great.
When you are young and new actress, I think they feel that it’s ok to accept less money for a part but as they grow in film industry, they will get paid substantially well but still less then men which is not fair. It’s like that in real World too, not just Hollywood. Society and Laws needs to change.
The problem is not that Lawrence was less paid than her male co- stars.She was a last casting idea by DOR during the Bafta award .She had a supporting character.
The problem is why Amy Adams was less paid than Jeremy Renner whereas she’s the lead actress and he only is a supporting character.
if the movie was made today,JLAw and Cooper would be more paid than Bale and Adams always would be less paid than everyone( she’s the less famous of the 5 actors)
YES!! I totally agree. Ever since that hacked email revealed the pay discrepancies on American Hustle, everyone has been going on and on about poor J-Law, when the real crime was against Amy Adams, IMO.
Amy Pascal has now sunk lower in my opinion, she needs to shut up before nobody has any time left for her at all.
This woman is coked out of her mind and is as bad as the men she worked for.
She is irritating.
I wonder how long before she writes a book?
i’d read it.
I am still bummed that Julia Philips died. She is someone who would have been a riot for lunch!!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Youll-Never-Lunch-this-Again/dp/0571216234
I think her book is the best expose about Hollywood, and she’s rightly the first female producer to win an Oscar for THE STING.
Seriously now?!
As if…
The only good thing that this hack brought is more awareness about this huge pay gap. And don’t tell me “if you want to work for less…what can I do?! I run business after all” I wonder in how many companies it’s transperant who earns what. Money talk is usually tabu.
I feel taken for a ride Amy…
The thing is, movie stars have their normal quotes for studio movies but they take a pay cut for ensemble movies like American Hustle so Pascal’s know your value doesn’t make any sense in this context. Everyone knows stars get paid less for movies like Hustle than something like Hunger Games so it’s not as if the actual amount of money was the problem here but rather that JLaw’s reps found out she and Amy Adams were essentially taking more of a pay cut than the men did due to having lower back-end points. It’s not as if she was desperate to do the movie in the first place, she said in an interview that she had three weeks between Catching Fire and X-Men filming and wanted to go on a holiday but David O. Russell managed to convince her to take the part and she did it as a favor to him. Well, I guess she learned her lesson.
I don’t know if Amy Adams was even aware she was getting a lower back-end than the men before the Sony emails got public. It’s easy for Pascal to say women shouldn’t work for less than men since she knows how much everyone is getting paid but it’s not as if actors and their reps necessarily have this information when negotiating. Why is it always women’s responsibility to demand equal treatment? Why couldn’t Sony offer to pay everyone 6.5% instead of giving the four men (Bale, Renner, Cooper and Russell) 7% and the women (Amy and Jennifer) 5%? It’s not as if 0.5% would have been a breaking point for the men and everyone would have been equally treated and Sony wouldn’t have had to pay any more than they ended up paying and there would have been less resentment and negative publicity.
Amy is failing to address what happens to women who demand more in Hollywood. Who remembers how Demi Moore essentially priced herself out for Hollywood for demanding the same salaries as the top men. Her nickname was ‘gimme Moore’. Yes, in the end her films were terrible, but so were the men, and they were valued for their terrible films whereas she was run out of town and considered difficult for demanding more.
As someone whose job is to help negotiate salaries for actors, I have to say she’s right. You start with the same offer across the board (usually) and negotiate from there. If Jennifer Lawrence’s people agreed at a certain salary and Bradley Cooper’s kept driving it up- that’s just how it goes. They’re not aware of what other agents are negotiating for or what they get. Sony is not going to offer her more money so she’s even with anyone. They stop when the agents say “OK”.
I completely agree that there’s an egregious gap when it comes to gender and salary, but that’s not always the case, to be honest.
Maybe it’s just me and I really don’t want to put anything else on Amy given her spectacular handling of issues (sarcasm), but I’m not buying the “If people want to make less money, I’ll pay them less”. That’s bull. What she should have said was “If the studio system has systematically devalued the work and contribution of women while paying men more to the point where job security is a concern, then I’ll just continue with the bs to guard the door to the boy’s club”. Seriously, what woman doesn’t want more money or equal pay (Evangeline Lily?)? To somehow shift the onus on actresses to fix the pay disparity is straight up offensive. Not everyone has the pull of Theron or Lawrence and it’s a little hard to take this “demand for more money” thing seriously when Chiwetal Ejiofer was passed over for the bond villain role because the replacement was a million dollars cheaper, which is just insane given the black audience that they could have marketed to with a bit more diversity. Sigh… Sorry for the rant. I just can’t with Amy Pascal anymore.
They just need better agents.
I dislike JLaw and I’m happy to hear that she got less pay. She’s quite unpleasant with the hypocrisy: don’t look at my naked photos, then posing semi nude for a magazine. Same bleeding difference.
@Carla: WTH?…are you trolling?. No, Jennifer Lawrence deserved to be paid as much as her male costars. It’s about equality.
As far as the Vanity Fair photo…again, WTH?. The photoshoot was taken a month before her cell phone photos were stolen. The difference is about consent…the Vanity Fair photo was with her consent. The stolen photos were without consent. You can’t see the difference…seriously?. Thank God you are in the minority where this issue is concerned.