The pay gap is something that's a part of almost every industry, but it's almost never as obvious and pronounced as it is in Hollywood.
Just last year, Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams were in the headlines over issues with their payment for reshoots for All The Money In The World, with Wahlberg picking up a substantially larger cheque to Williams for the same amount of work and time. It's been going on for years, but there's been more than a few actors who've gone out of their way to do what they can to level the playing field - and one of them is the late, great Paul Newman.
In an interview with BBC 5 Radio, Susan Sarandon revealed that on the 1998 neo-noir film, Twilight (no, not that one), her two co-stars Gene Hackman and Paul Newman were being paid the same amount - with both being paid more than her. When Sarandon brought this up with them at a meeting, Newman offered to give up part of his salary to ensure they were on equal pay.
"They said it was 'favoured nations', but they only meant the two guys," explained Sarandon. "He stepped forward and said, 'Well I'll give you part of mine'. So, yeah, he was a gem." The term favoured nations refers to an agreement in actor's contract where if they had equal billing on a poster, the producers will pay them equally - in this case, however, it only applied to two-thirds of the equally billed actors.
Via BBC
