5 Actresses Who Demand Equal Pay as Their Male Co-stars

Emmy Rossum
Rossum had been acting on the family comedy Shameless for seven seasons, but demanded as much pay as her co-star William H. Macy if she was to appear in season eight. Thankfully, by the end of 2016, she happily announced that she would be returning for the eighth season, most likely due to the issue being resolved.

Charlize Theron
Theron has proven time and time again that she can lead a picture as anything from a criminal (Monster) to an action star (Aeon Flux). But when she played the evil queen in The Huntsman, she noticed she wasn’t being paid as much as the film’s A-lister Chris Hemsworth. She put her foot down and the producers put down the money. Theron has encouraged other female actors to receive equal pay by simply never backing down, but I guess it also helps to be a versatile and powerful a player as Theron.

Jennifer Lawrence
Lawrence may be one of the highest paid female actors in Hollywood, but she had to face quite a battle to get to this point. For years she was forced to back down when producers told her she was either being a spoiled brat or too demanding for her wage requests. But when leakage of internal emails from Sony Pictures revealed similar disparities between female and male roles, she knew she couldn’t stay silent and went vocal with her concerns. Today, she is such a high talent that she was actually paid more than her male counterpart of Chris Pratt when starring alongside him in the sci-fi romance Passengers (2016).

Patricia Arquette
Arquette used her platform at the Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actress in Boyhood (2014), to speak out on the wage gap for actresses who are paid less than male actors. While she may not have gained any big acting gigs since that speech, she has taken it upon herself to go on a crusade for change in wages for other actresses. She co-hosted the Dinner for Equality last year and was an executive producer on the documentary Equal Means Equal.