“Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World”..Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) ..Ph: Jay Maidment..© 2013 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2013 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

In an interview with Marie Claire, Academy Award winning actress Natalie Portman revealed that co-star Ashton Kutcher was paid three times more than her when they both starred in the 2011 movie No Strings Attached.

Portman has been very vocal about pay inequality between men and women in Hollywood, especially after an email hack on Sony Pictures revealed widespread pay inequality among A-list movie stars based on gender in 2014.

Portman acknowledged that she got paid well for doing the movie so it wasn’t necessarily the money that was the issue, it was more the principle that somebody was being paid for the same amount of work.

“I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with “quotes” in Hollywood… 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,’ she continued. ‘In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”

“I don’t think women and men are more or less capable. We just have a clear issue with women not having opportunities. We need to be part of the solution, not perpetuating the problem.”

It can be a bit tricky to determine exactly how much someone should be paid for starring in a movie. Sometimes, with two co-stars, one actor has more value over the other and thus would get paid more. One example was in the movie Dumb and Dumber. Jim Carrey was paid way more than Jeff Daniels even though both had about the same amount of lines because Carrey was the emerging hot comedic talent and Daniels mostly did drama. Even though Daniels was somewhat well known, the logic was people were going to the box office to see Carrey and thus he was paid more.

For Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, it would appear both had their fair share of big roles before No Strings Attached. Portman was in the Star Wars trilogy and starred in V for VendettaMr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and Black Swan, where Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Kutcher was in Dude, Where’s My Car, The Butterfly Effect and the TV series That 70’s Show and Punk’d which earned him over a dozen Teen Choice Awards.

At best, you could argue that both should at minimum be paid equally. It could be argued that Portman deserved to be paid a little more than Kutcher. But it looks like it would be incorrect to argue Kutcher earned three times more than Portman. It should also be noted that while Portman’s last role before No Strings Attached was Black Swan, she may have signed on before winning the Oscar (which  would have been major leverage). Also, Kutcher didn’t sign on for Two and a Half Men until a couple months after No Strings Attached was released so that doesn’t apply either.

After reading the news, Kutcher tweeted that he was “so proud” of Portman for speaking out about pay inequality. And really, this isn’t Kutcher’s fault. It’s not his fault he was getting paid three times more than Portman and while we would love to see Kutcher voluntarily give up most of his pay, it would be unfair to expect him to do that and make him into the bad guy when the movie studios who determine who gets paid what are at fault. Definitely, male and female actors are needed if actual change is to be made. But let’s focus criticism on where it should go, the studios.

[Marie Claire]

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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