Bravo! Ashton Kutcher commended his No Strings Attached costar Natalie Portman for advocating for women’s pay equality after her shocking confession that she was paid three times less than him for the 2011 film.
“So proud of Natalie and all women who stand up for closing the gender pay gap!” he tweeted on Wednesday, January 11, along with a link to her Marie Claire UK cover story.
In the article, Portman, 35, said she was aware that she was underpaid for the rom-com, but didn’t stand up for herself at the time. “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 [quote] was three times higher than mine so they said he should get three times more,” she said. “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.”
The Jackie actress added that although the pay gap problem occurs in every industry, the stats are particularly astounding in Hollywood. “Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar,” she told the magazine. “In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar.”
The Oscar winner also explained that she advocated for a female director for her new film On the Basis of Sex, in which she plays Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “We need to be part of the solution, not perpetuating the problem,” she said. “As this story is specifically about gender discrimination, I was like, ‘How dare we not hire a female.’”
