Even by Hollywood’s standards, this is fkn bullshit: Natalie Portman was reportedly paid just one-third of Ashton Kutcher’s fee for 2011 rom-com ‘No Strings Attached’.
One third. Of what Ashton Kutcher gets. Ashton Kutcher, the guy who plays shitheads?!
For those who also have not seen ‘No Strings,’ a cursory Google search shows they were co-leads, and Portman actually received first billing. But they received the same screen-time, they did the same job; they should have gotten the same pay.
But as Portman told ‘Marie Claire,’ wages are set in Hollywood not by work or even talent but by ‘quotes,’ an oddly flawed system of determining someone’s worth:
“Ashton Kutcher was paid three times as much as me on No Strings Attached. I knew and I went along with it, because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood.”“His 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.”
And honestly, even playing by that (extremely crap) system, how in the hell was Portman valued less than that guy shown dropping a woman?
The film came out only five years ago, not when Portman was only starting to breakout around 1999. When she was in high-school. And was cast in a Star Wars film.
And not only is she a ridiculously popular, now Oscar-winning actor, she’s a renowned neuroscientist and scholar. She was asked to lecture on counterterrorism while shooting ‘V For Vendetta’ in 2006, for fucks sake.
Ashton Kutcher was on a fun, stupid TV show for a bit before marrying Demi Moore, flopping around stoner films, wearing brownface for some chips, and replacing Charlie Sheen on a not-fun, stupid TV show.
God I hate you Ashton Kutcher.
The answer to this little mystery is, obviously, sexism. As Portman said:
“Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar. In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”
And she’s pretty much on the (very lopsided) money. In 2013, a Forbes report showed that Hollywood’s highest paid female actors earned approximately 40 per cent less than the highest paid male actors.
Basically, the gender gap is never so bad that the film industry can’t make it a little bit worse.
Source: The Telegraph.
Photo: Dreamworks.
