“There’s a huge problem in the wage gap,” actress says

Oct 19, 2015 08:34 GMT  ·  By
Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain at the premiere of "The Martian," from director Ridley Scott
   Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain at the premiere of "The Martian," from director Ridley Scott

Actress Jessica Chastain is adding her voice to the ongoing discussion on the pay disparity between men and women in Hollywood. She does so by offering the best example: her own, from the recent blockbuster “The Martian,” also starring Matt Damon.

Previous unconfirmed reports claimed that Damon, as the male lead of the movie, got paid the impressive amount of $25 million (€21.9 million), while Chastain, as a supporting actress with other solid hits under her belt, made $7 million (€6.1 million). That last figure is not accurate, she says.

Chastain made 20 times less money than Damon

Though she’s billed as a supporting actress, Chastain’s name was also a huge draw for audiences with “The Martian.” She also promoted the movie with Damon and on her own, so it’s not like she was a no-name who only did a few scenes, so it doesn’t make sense for her to be paid 20 times less than what Damon got.

Yet this is exactly what happened, she reveals in a recent chat with HuffPost Live. Chastain is now promoting Guillermo Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” and the question of her salary on “The Martian” is often asked of her.

So far, she has refused to get into details, but she must have heard the report mentioned above, so she wants to set the record straight on it.

“And I’ve actually never said this, I think, so here we go!” she says. “There’s also misinformation out there. Like someone wrote an article once that said that I made a certain amount of money for ‘The Martian.’ I made less than a quarter of that in reality.”

There’s a strong possibility that she’s referring to the $7 million (€6.1 million) rumored paycheck, in which case, it means that she got paid less than $2 million (€1.7 million) for her role.

“There’s a huge problem in the wage gap”

As noted above, Chastain is just one of the many famous and critically acclaimed actresses to speak on the wage gap in Hollywood. In the same interview, she stresses that she’s only talking about her salary on “The Martian” (in more or less concrete terms) because the wage disparity is a real problem.

By denying women the same kind of salary that men get for the same kind of work, the industry is only motivating the latter, while shutting the former up, she says. Right now, Hollywood isn’t telling “the stories of many,” but the “stories of few,” even though there is enough diversity in the industry to allow for that.

Pay equality shouldn’t be a rarity, it should just be. And it’s “ridiculous” that it isn’t.