5 Most Shocking Pay Gaps Between Leading Men and Women

Actresses such as Emmy Rossum have begun to speak out about the shocking pay disparity between men and women in Hollywood. It’s a wonder it even took this long, as the wage gap is glaringly obvious when you look at the numbers.

The top 10 highest-paid actors for 2016 earned a whopping $457 million, according to Forbes. That’s more than double the earnings of the top 10 highest-paid actresses for the year. They brought in a combined $205 million.

READ MORE: Slay Your Pay: Negotiating the Salary You Deserve

Highest-paid actress Jennifer Lawrence brought in $46 million, but that number would only put her at number six on the actors’ list, just above Ben Affleck’s $43 million. Number one on that list was $64.5 million, earned by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

With those jaw-dropping numbers in mind, Entity looks at five of the most shocking cases of pay disparity between leading men and women.

1 Harrison Ford made millions more than both Carrie Fisher and Daisy Ridley for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015).

Ford is said to have made over $10 million and possibly even as high as $20 million for reprising his role as Han Solo in the “Star Wars” film. However, Carrie Fisher’s salary was more in the “low-seven-figure range,” according to Variety. She had starred alongside Ford in the original trilogy, but was paid significantly less to return as Princess Leia.

Additionally, Ridley earned a salary in the “low-six-figure range,” per Variety. Now, Ford is arguably a much more well-known actor than Ridley, and boasts a long and successful film career. However, such a staggering difference is shocking seeing as the journey of Ridley’s Rey is the focus of the film.

2 Gillian Anderson was offered “half” of “X-Files” co-star David Duchovny’s salary.

Anderson spoke with The Daily Beast about the pay disparity on the ’90s sci-fi series, and how it took her three years to be on equal footing with Duchovny financially, despite them doing equal work.

It may sound shocking to fans, as Anderson’s Special Agent Dana Scully is clearly an equal to her on-screen partner, Duchovny’s Fox Mulder. But then when it came time for the reboot in 2016, it happened again. “It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly,” she said. However, the publication noted that the co-stars ended up making equal pay for the event series.

3 Amy Adams made less than Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper on “American Hustle” (2013) for the same amount of work.

Of course everyone knows about the pay disparity on “American Hustle” due to the Sony hacks and Jennifer Lawrence’s Lenny Letter on the topic. And while any inequality is obviously not okay, it seems Adams really got the short end of the stick. Deadline reports that Lawrence only spent 19 days working on the project, which is not surprising since her character had more of a supporting role.

Adams, meanwhile, had a key part in the film, and spent 45 days on the project – the same amount as Bale and one day less than Cooper. They, however, took home $2.5 million while she earned $1.25 million. Lawrence and Adams both received seven points in a back-end pool that kicked in after cash break zero, while the men each received nine.

4 Matt Damon Earned 8X more than Jessica Chastain for “The Martian” (2015).

Speaking with the Huffington Post, Chastain corrected rumors that she brought home $7 million for “The Martian,” explaining it was “less than a quarter of that in reality.” Meanwhile, Damon is said to have earned $25 million for the picture, though IndieWire suggested it was likely closer to $15 million.

Now, Chastain admittedly has a smaller role in the film, though that still seems like quite a large disparity for the difference in screen time. Even factoring in Damon’s smaller estimated total, that means he was paid more than 8X the Oscar nominee.

READ MORE: 4 Reasons Why You Should Still Care About Equal Pay

Chastain commented on the situation, sharing that people were already saying “she’s making a lot less than her male co-stars,” with the wrong figures. So with her actually bringing in $1.75 million for the film, she noted, “so there is a huge wage gap in the industry.”

5 Diane Keaton had no back-end percentage for “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003) but co-star Jack Nicholson did.

Keaton starred as the leading actress alongside Nicholson in the romantic comedy written and directed by Nancy Meyers, which followed “a swinger on the cusp of being a senior citizen with a taste for young women, who falls in love with an accomplished woman closer to his own age.”

Keaton was arguably just as accomplished as Nicholson, though she was offered no back-end percentage for the film, while he was. Apparently Nicholson even realized how crazy that was, because in Keaton’s 2011 memoir “Then Again,” she shared that two years after the movie opened “a check with a lot of zeroes arrived in the mail for my back-end percentage.” A phone call to her agent revealed that Nicholson had given her a piece of his own percentage from the movie’s gross, as shared by The Guardian.