Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman spoke out about ongoing disparities in pay for women in Hollywood, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on The Amanpour Hour “I’m very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a fuck of a lot more than I am.”
Colman—who, in addition to winning an Academy Award, has starred in dozens of popular projects like The Crown and The Favourite—was asked by Amanpour if she herself had faced pay disparities. “Don’t get me started on the pay disparity, but male actors get paid more because they used to say they drew in the audiences,” Colman said. “And actually, that hasn’t been true for decades, but they still like to use that as a reason to not pay women as much as their male counterparts.”
Colman added “I know of one pay disparity, which is a 12,000 percent difference.”
Colman said in no uncertain terms that if she were a man working as an actor in Hollywood, she'd be paid far better.
Colman isn’t the only one to raise her voice. Taraji P. Henson has been vocal lately about the same issue, including to The Hollywood Reporter; she told the outlet about feeling stuck with the same lowball offers despite having an incredibly successful career in the industry.
Henson has spent the better part of the past year ringing the bell loudly about pay disparity in Hollywood, especially when it comes to Black women.
“I’ve been getting paid, and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail every project to get that same freaking quote [fee],” she told the outlet. “And it’s a slap in the face when people go, ‘Oh girl, you work all the time. You always working.’ Well, goddam—t, I have to. It’s not because I wish I could do two movies a year and that’s that. I have to work because the math ain’t mathing. And I have bills.”
Henson said that she is fighting to end pay disparity for those Black actresses who come behind her, so they won't have to go through the struggles she and others have faced.
Henson said she'd tried to walk away from the business twice, but couldn't let herself do it until progress had been made.
She added “I’ve been doing this for two decades and sometimes I get tired of fighting because I know what I do is bigger than me. I know that the legacy I leave will affect somebody coming up behind me. My prayer is that I don’t want these Black girls to have the same fights that me and Viola [Davis], Octavia [Spencer], we out here thugging it out. Otherwise, why am I doing this? For my own vanity? There’s no blessing in that. I’ve tried twice to walk away [from the business]. But I can’t, because if I do, how does that help the ones coming up behind me?”
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