Bradley Cooper has stepped up and said that he will do more to ensure that the actresses in his films are paid as fairly as he himself, pledging that he will negotiate his own contract alongside theirs for upcoming roles.
Earlier this week, Cooper’s frequent co-star Jennifer Lawrence published an essay in Lena Dunham‘s Lenny, explaining her frustration at the wage gap that routinely sees her paid less than the men in her movies.
She realised the extent of the wage gap after seeing information come to light from the Sony email hack, indicating that Cooper, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner earner significantly more than she or Amy Adams did for American Hustle.
She wrote that, on discovering she was getting paid less than “the lucky people with dicks”, she wasn’t mad at Sony, she was mad at herself, for being a less shrewd negotiator and wanting to play nice.
“Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper all fought and succeeded in negotiating powerful deals for themselves. If anything, I’m sure they were commended for being fierce and tactical, while I was busy worrying about coming across as a brat and not getting my fair share.”
In a recent interview with Reuters, Cooper said that Adams “should have been paid more than everybody” for American Hustle. “She worked every day on that movie and got paid nothing It’s really horrible actually, it’s almost embarrassing.”
Cooper said that he will do as much as he can to try and fix the problem, pledging to negotiate his salary alongside his female counterparts, out in the open. He said:
“I don’t know where it’s changing otherwise but that’s something that I could do. Usually you don’t talk about the financial stuff, you have people. But you know what? It’s time to start doing that.”
The joint negotiation tactic has worked for the casts of major sitcoms like Friends and Modern Family, who do it to make sure that everyone is paid equitably, so maybe it can work in movies, too.
via Vulture
Photo: Andrew H Walker via Getty Images
Photo: Andrew H Walker via Getty Images
