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Jessica Chastain has spoken candidly about her efforts in negotiating her contracts to ensure her wages are on a par with her male co-stars.
In an interview with Variety for itsPower of Womenissue, the two-time Oscar-nominated star of The Help and Zero Dark Thirty revealed how she will turn down roles if she is offered a fraction of what her male counterpart would earn.
“I'm not allowing that in my life,” she stated.
She elaborated: I remember watching Amy Pascal - it was after the Sony hack, and she was giving a talk somewhere. She said part of the reason women don’t get paid equal to men is they don’t ask for more; actresses need to stop being so grateful. That really hit me. At first, I was really pissed off. And then I thought, 'She’s touching on something here.' Women need to step forward and demand they’re fairly compensated for their work.
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Chastain stated that "fairness of pay" is now always at the forefront of her mind.
“What I do now, when I’m taking on a film, I always ask about the fairness of the pay. I ask what they’re offering me in comparison to the guy. I don’t care about how much I get paid; I’m in an industry where we’re overcompensated for the work we do. But I don’t want to be on a set where I’m doing the same work as someone else and they’re getting five times what I’m getting.”
The Miss Sloane star confirmed that she recently turned down a “huge” role because of the wage gap.
“There was something huge that I recently turned down. For me, it wasn’t about the money; it was an old-fashioned problem of the wage gap. I turned it down, and they didn’t come back. I remember afterwards I was like, 'What did I do? Maybe it was a mistake.' But it wasn’t, because everyone in the studio system heard what I did. So what you’re doing is creating a reputation: Don’t bring Jessica something where she’s not being fairly compensated compared to the male actor.
“Even though I lost that film, I’ve created a boundary. I drew a line in the sand.”
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