Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams Paid Less Than Male Co-Stars, Revealing Disappointing Gender Wage Gap

Jennifer Lawrence is one of the biggest movie stars working right now, thanks to her roles in ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘X-Men’ franchises, and more awards-ready fare like ‘American Hustle.’ Similarly, Amy Adams is also a pretty big deal, having been nominated for an Oscar five times now. It might surprise you to learn that Lawrence and Adams are still paid less than their male counterparts, even though they are two of our most acclaimed and beloved stars. In another leak from the massive Sony e-mail hack, we’ve learned that the reach of the depressing gender wage gap extends to these celebrated actresses.

The Daily Beast found e-mails featuring many exchanges regarding Jennifer Lawrence. In an e-mail between Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal and ‘Cleopatra’ screenwriter Brian Helgeland, Pascal suggests that they replace Angelina Jolie with Lawrence on the project, with Helgeland admitting that he’s considered it.

But not every e-mail regarding Lawrence was positive: In an e-mail from last December, Andrew Gumpert, the President of Business Affairs and Administration for Columbia Pictures, discussed the “points” (compensation received on the back-end) on ‘American Hustle’ with Pascal and Doug Belgrad, the President of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group. Of the names below: “Amy” is co-star Amy Adams, “O’Russell” is director David O’Russell, “Renner” is co-star Jeremy Renner, and “Megan” refers to Megan Ellison, the head of Annapurna Pictures, which co-financed the film.

Got a steve warren/gretchen rush call that it’s unfair the male actors get 9% in the pool and jennifer is only at 7pts. You may recall Jennifer was at 5 (amy was and is at 7) and WE anted in 2 extra points for Jennifer to get her up to 7. If anyone needs to top jennifer up it’s megan. BUT I think amy and Jennifer are tied so upping JL, ups AA.

And then Grumpert added this to further clarify:

The current talent deals are:  O’Russell: 9%; Cooper: 9%; Bale: 9%; Renner: 9%; Lawrence: 7%; Adams: 7%.

As you’ll note, director David O’Russell and the male stars of ‘American Hustle’ are all making 2% more than both Lawrence and Adams. Initially, they wanted to pay Lawrence two points less, but managed to get her on the same level as Adams. Even still, it’s horribly disappointing to learn that Lawrence and Adams are paid less than their male co-stars, especially when they are arguably more sought after and adored than Jeremy Renner (no offense to Renner, but let’s be realistic here).

The gender wage gap is sadly all-too real, with women consistently making less than men for doing the same work, and sometimes they’re still paid less even when they work harder or better than their male counterparts. Adding further to this unfortunate revelation, a salary spreadsheet showed that the wage gap is also present among Sony’s staff—17 out of 6,000 employees made $1 million or more, while only one of those employees is a woman. Additionally, the data revealed that Michael DeLuca makes $2.4 million, while Hannah Minghella, his Co-President of Production at Columbia, makes $1.5 million—and they share the same job title.

We have been relishing in the leaked e-mails, discovering Sony’s potential plans for upcoming films (as well as info regarding rival studios), but there’s still some shocking and sad information to be gleaned from all of this. Knowing that Lawrence and Adams will be paid less than their male co-stars regardless of how hard they work and how acclaimed they are, is just downright depressing. Sony should be embarrassed.