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At last year’s Oscars, Patricia Arquette gave an impassioned speech about gender inequality and equal pay while accepting her best supporting actress award for Boyhood.
Since then, many actors in Hollywood have spoken out against inequality on screen, including Jennifer Lawrence, who wrote an online essay addressing the problem.
Speaking at “Dinner For Equality”, an LA event co-hosted by Arquette, the pair revisited those moments, and spoke of the hardships that followed on.
As noted by Variety, Arquette said she believes she has lost out of two acting gigs since the speech: “I’m okay with that,” she said. “But it’s not just about acting, and it’s not about me as an actor. I don’t believe this is fair for anybody.
The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood
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“I want to live in the America I believe in, that really is fair, that really has possibilities, and really does treat people of all races and all sexes equally.”
Lawrence went on to speak about becoming a target for speaking out in her online essay: “When I wrote that essay I got a lot of support but I also have a Republican family in Kentucky who told me my career was effectively over.”
Arquette made sure to note that the difficulties actresses face are also faced by millions in the US “We have tens of millions of single moms in the country and they’re really struggling, especially when they’re paid less than men.
"We have 33 million women and kids who wouldn’t be in poverty, who have full-time working moms; if they were just paid their full dollar, they wouldn’t be in poverty. They wouldn’t be wealthy, but they wouldn’t be in poverty.”
Also in attendance at the dinner were Elon Musk, Reese Witherspoon, Lily Tomlin, Marisa Tomei, Maria Bello, Minka Kelly and Stevie Wonder.
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