Emma Stone is officially the highest paid female star in Hollywood, unseating her pal Jennifer Lawrence from the spot she’s held for the past two years.
“In my career so far, I’ve needed my male co-stars to take a pay cut so that I may have parity with them,” she told Out. “And that’s something they do for me because they feel it’s what’s right and fair. That’s something that’s also not discussed, necessarily: that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say, ‘That’s what’s fair.’”
In a stroke of good timing, Stone’s upcoming film happens to be Battle of the Sexes, in which Stone portrays tennis pro Billie Jean King in the story of her famous 1973 match against the insufferable Bobby Riggs, played by Steve Carrell. The trailer reveals that at least part of the plot focuses on King being offered less money than her male counterparts, on the basis that “the men are simply more exciting to watch.” As Stone told Out:
“It’s not about, ‘Women are this and men are that.’ It is, ‘We are all the same, we are all equal, we all deserve the same respect and the same rights.”
Number two on the list, surprisingly, is Jennifer Aniston, who collected $25.5 million by doing a combination of commercials and films. Forbes also reports that she made some cash off the hair-care line Living Proof, in which she owned a stake before the company was sold to Unilever for an unknown sum in 2016.
Lawrence, though, dropped all the way down to number three with $24 million, which just over half of what she collected last year. Melissa McCarthy was number four with $18 million, and Mila Kunis was number five with $15.5 million.
Unlike last year, not a single woman of color breached the top ten. (In 2016, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing and Indian Bollywood star Deepika Padukone both made the list.) In a statement to Elle, an associate editor at Forbes said that,
The lack of diversity on the list comes down to roles: Only 28.3% of all speaking roles across formats go to characters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, according to a 2016 study. That means there are simply fewer characters—and fewer high-paying roles—written for women of color. When studios, directors and screenwriters begin creating more main characters for women of color in the types of big budget movies that pay huge upfront fees and backend profits, we’ll see more actors of color on the list.”
Forbes does not appear to have released its highest paid actor of 2017, but in a comprehensive list of the highest paid celebrities published in June, it looks like Mark Wahlberg topped the charts, making $68 million over a 12-month period. In 2016, the honor went to the Rock with $64. 5 million.
