If a Jennifer Lawrence or Charlize Theron makes a few million dollars less than a Bradley Cooper or Tom Cruise, some might say, "Who cares?"
The wage gap has persisted for decades for all working women in America, who get 78 cents for every dollar made by a man. While there are currently no available statistics on what the salary divide looks like for actors specifically, Adam Moore, national director of equal employment opportunities and diversity for the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), confirms the wage gap is present — and that it needs to be addressed.
"The most visible workplace on the planet is where our members go to work," says Moore. "It's not just about these A-list celebrities that didn't feel they got as many millions of dollars as they want. This goes to a larger issue of equity for everyone in this country."
To better understand the wage gap in Hollywood, Cosmopolitan.com spoke to a female agent, who asked to remain anonymous, at one of the top talent agencies in the country.
How do negotiations work?
When you get an offer, there's a dollar amount attached. [The studio executives are] like, "Hey, we're going to pay you X amount of money to be in our movie." And if it's a high-level star, they'll offer perks. These are called "deal points." We might be like, "No," "Yes," "Don't bother coming to us if you have that amount of money."
And the dollar amount that's attached is based on what they have in their budget?
It's based on whatever they want to pay, essentially. Now, with television — and with feature [films] too, but more specifically with television — it is based on what are known as "quotes." And quotes are whatever [the actor] made before. They will do their research ahead of time: Well, what are their quotes? And sometimes we'll give them and sometimes we won't, depending on our strategy.
If it's a small indie but we want a client to do it, and it's a million-dollar indie, we don't want to say, "Well, she made $5 million on her last movie." Because then they might not come. They might be like, "Oh, well, we could never get her." We're like, "No, we want to have a conversation."
If you don't provide the quotes, can they find another way to get them?
Yeah, it depends. If they work at a studio, they can see what they made on the last movie. So there are ways to find that out.
You mentioned there may be perks or deal points. What are some examples?
There are financial perks — box office bonuses and ownership of a percentage of profits. There's also [things like] how many first-class tickets will you get. Will you fly out a whole family? Will you give a rental car, and a car and driver? "We'll give you a car, we'll give you a driver, we'll pay for a stylist, pay for your publicist," etc.
Have you noticed any differences in terms of the kinds of things that are discussed when a client is a female versus a male actor?
It's tough to distinguish because there are certain women who are very firm in what they want and they're willing to walk away. There isn't something that sticks out to me as something glaring, like, "Women are totally flexible and men want to hold out for more perks." I will say that one of the things I've noticed is that women are more likely to fight for an extra airline ticket, not only for their kid, but for their nanny. They need a bigger trailer for their kid, especially when it's a young kid. I've found that women are, in terms of location, especially for television, less likely to want to film a television show in a place outside of their [home city].
Is that because of family issues, usually?
Yeah. Their kids are in school. They don't want to uproot their whole families for a pilot that might not go to series. Women tend to want more perks with regard to their family, [like] Fridays off for a movie so they can go home to visit their kid. It's negotiating a work-life balance.
When a client says, "I need a bigger trailer for my kids," are the studios usually amenable to working with them or do they get annoyed?
It depends on what it is. I had a client who needed a bigger trailer and she needed more than one ticket in order to bring her kid. And they were perfectly nice about it. They weren't annoyed. They were like, "We understand, the kid is a newborn. She needs to be with the mother." But sometimes they just cannot do it for budget or logistics.
One thing I've heard from folks in the industry is that women need to be willing to say no and walk away from negotiations.
There are some times when women need to walk away — [when] we as a team, as a collective [do]. But here's the thing that I think should be talked about in terms of Hollywood: When you talk about, "Oh, a woman's more easily going to walk away or isn't going to walk away" — it's like, "OK, which woman? Is it me, the agent?" We talk about actresses, but with negotiations, especially for big-name stars, there are usually a lot of people involved. Sometimes I feel like, "You know what? I don't want to lose the deal." Am I willing to walk away and risk [the offer] not coming back? I've noticed that in me, that I'm not willing to walk away, as opposed to someone else who might just be like, "Pass. I'm not doing this." That can be something to consider.
And are female clients more inclined to listen to their agents when they tell them to accept versus pass?
I think that women are actually more likely to listen to their advisers; women are more likely to follow what their agents and managers and lawyers are telling them, rather than [dissent]. Sometimes the men are like, "Nope, I want $2 million for this movie. I'm not doing it at a penny less than that." And that's it. Versus some negotiations where it's like, "Look, I know you wanted $2 million. They're at a million and a half. This will go away if we say no. You can say no on principle or not. We think you should do this movie." I think a woman is more likely to be like, "OK, I'll do that."
People have been talking about the Jennifer Lawrence example because the circumstances around it were laid so bare and she's talked about it personally. What could she have done to make a difference in that case?
The only thing she could have done is said, "OK, I'm not going to do the movie. I'm going to pass. I'm going to walk away because I'm not being paid the same amount." Then they might have gone to someone else. I think the crux of it is not that she was a poor negotiator, because first of all, she had plenty of people negotiating on her behalf, some of whom, if not all of them, are men.
But in terms of what she could do, in some ways, the deeper issue is how much she and women are valued as a whole. It's like, "Oh, well, we can always just get another actress." [Whereas] with Leonardo DiCaprio you think, There's no one like him. But Jennifer Lawrence, you just get someone else. Women all across the board are just not valued.
Do you ever create deals for your clients, where you know a filmmaker who's doing a project and you pair up your actor with that filmmaker — and then take the project to the studio instead of the other way around?
That's not personally what I do, but our agency does that all the time.
I'm just wondering if, when it's done that way, does that give an actor more leverage?
Yes. Here's the thing in terms of leverage though: If it's a high-level star, then you have more leverage. Well, who's a high-level star? It's a white guy. You don't have a lot of African-American high-level stars. You don't have a lot of women who are movie stars, especially women at a certain age. Yes, we absolutely put packages together and things like that, but in terms of what kind of money you're going to get, sometimes the men are valued more. A mid-level actor versus a high-level actress — it's like, you'll definitely be able to get more money for the actor.
How do we fix this problem? Do women need to get their initial quotes up? Because the quotes are often lower than men's.
Believe me, I totally agree that women need to get their quotes up, and they need to hold out for things and hold out for more money and everything like that. The thing, though, that also needs to happen, and this is harder and trickier, is the roles need to be better. We had a client who passed on a project because she wasn't being paid the same as her male co-star. We totally supported it, totally agreed. But in the script, this character, she was just the wife and there wasn't that much for her to do and the size of the male role was bigger. So everyone said, not only did he have higher quotes, but he worked more days, more hours, more weeks, and it's more to do.
So not only do the women want more money, they want more money and they want more work. It's still the case that the [roles] being offered to women, especially women who are in their 50s, are like, "Do you want to be this young star's mom or that young star's mom?" "Or this star's wife or that star's wife?" "Now you can play their mother even though you played their love interest in the last movie." These things are real. I'll go through the projects that are out there, and it will be four men for one woman. So when you have that few parts, that's why women feel like they have to say yes, because they want to work. The real issue is women don't have the luxury to hold out, because if they hold out, then what are they going to do? Are they going to not work for the rest of the year? If they don't work for the rest of the year, they're not in demand.
OK, so in order to get more substantive female roles, there have to be more movies and shows that have those kinds of parts in them. How?
I don't know how you change minds on an individual level. It's like, first of all, when Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada did amazing numbers at the box office, everyone's like, "Oh, wow, we're really going to get the message." And still nothing changes. You have to say — and this also goes for women and people of color: "OK, this is a mandate. We are going to change this because it's better for our business model, it's better for the world, it's better for storytelling." I'm not advocating that the studios need to be a charity because it's not charity. It's better for creativity if you allow different diversity of storytelling in every sense of the word. But it has to be a mandate. "We need to have female directors as 50 percent of who directs our eight movies this year." If you're a studio and you say that, that will make a difference. Otherwise nothing will change.
What do you think?