Female trouble: All the women paid less than their male co-stars
It seems even the Queen can be subjected to pay inequality. During a panel at the INTV Conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Netflix producers revealed Claire Foy – who played Queen Elizabeth in period drama The Crown – was paid less than her co-star Matt Smith who portrayed her on-screen hubby, Prince Philip. Though Smith’s salary is yet to be disclosed, Foy was reportedly paid $40,000 per episode for the first two seasons of the series. According to Variety, The Crown’s producers (Andy Harries, Suzanne Mackie, and Martin Childs) indicated Smith’s high-profile role on Doctor Who meant he commanded a higher salary than his female co-star. Mackie revealed the pay disparity will be rectified by stating, “Going forward, no one gets paid more than the Queen.” However, that likely has a great deal to do with veteran actor Olivia Colman replacing Foy in the third season of the show. The gender pay gap in the entertainment industry has remained a consistent topic of dispute for the past year. In that time, several bombshell revelations have been made concerning various high-profile female actors who were paid considerably less than their male co-stars.
Michelle Williams failed to get All the Money in the World
One of the most staggering examples of the Hollywood pay gap in the past year came courtesy of reshoots on Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World when it was revealed four-times Oscar-nominated actor Michelle Williams was paid significantly less than blockbuster meathead Mark Wahlberg. While the artist formerly known as Marky-Mark came away with a cool $1.5 million for reshooting his scenes, Williams was thrown a measly $80 per diem, totaling around $1,000 – less than one tenth of what her male co-star was paid for the same job. However, upon his discovery of this glaring inequality, Wahlberg donated his complete reshoot fee to Time’s Up under Williams’s name in a bid to “support the fight for fair pay.”
Even big-shot Natalie Portman has a payday horror story
You would think an Oscar-winner like Natalie Portman would at least receive equal pay to an actor who once headlined a movie called Dude, Where’s My Car?, but apparently not. The acclaimed actor revealed to Marie Claire she was paid three times less than her No Strings Attached co-star Ashton Kutcher in 2011. “I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood,” Portman divulged, “His [quote] was three times higher than mine so they said he should get three times more. I wasn’t as pissed as I should have been. I mean, we get paid a lot, so it’s hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy.”
E! News paid a woman less than half of what her male co-host made
In December 2017, Catt Sadler quit E! News after discovering her male co-host Jason Kennedy made close to “double” her salary “for the past several years.” Sadler shared the news on her website and wrote, “How can I operate with integrity and stay on at E! if they’re not willing to pay me the same as him?” On the Golden Globes red carpet, high-profile women such as Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex and the City) & Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) blasted E! for the pay disparity, with Will & Grace star Debra Messing lambasting, “I was so shocked to hear that E! doesn’t believe in paying their female co-host the same as their male co-host. I miss Catt Sadler. So we stand with her . . . We want people to start having this conversation that women are just as valuable as men.” In January, E! defended their decision to pay Sadler less than Kennedy because they “had different roles,” and cautioned, “there is a lot of misinformation out there.”
Playing the leading character doesn’t always equate to leading pay
Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo might be the highest-earning female actor on a TV drama right now with a combined salary of $20 million per year, but in January she revealed her former co-star Patrick Dempsey was once inexplicably being paid more than her. “At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Meredith Grey. They wouldn’t give it to me,” Pompeo revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. “I could have walked away, so why didn’t I? It’s my show; I’m the number one.” The actor went on to call Dempsey’s 2015 departure from the show “a defining moment, deal-wise,” which helped her to snag that “number one” salary. Pompeo reached $575,000 per episode plus bonuses totaling around $20 million annually.
Progress and Back Pay Resolutions
Claire Foy received £200,000 back pay after the disclosure of her pay gap with Matt Smith. Mark Wahlberg donated his $1.5 million reshoot fee to Time’s Up. These moves addressed some immediate imbalances. They also signaled that public scrutiny could shift studio accounting. Other productions quietly adjusted subsequent deals without fanfare. The pattern showed that exposure sometimes produced cash, not just statements. Women paid less than male co-stars still had to navigate contract language that protected legacy quotes. Back pay offered closure for certain cases, yet it left the underlying negotiation structure untouched.
Current Highest-Paid Actresses Landscape
Scarlett Johansson earned $43 million in 2025. Millie Bobby Brown and Reese Witherspoon each earned $26 million. These figures placed three women inside the top tier of annual earnings. The list still showed fewer female names than male names in the highest brackets. Action franchises and streaming output deals drove the top paydays. Older actresses continued to appear less frequently in the highest slots. The numbers reflected both opportunity and the lingering effects of earlier quote systems. Women paid less than male co-stars remained a visible pattern even at the upper end of the scale.
Broader Industry Data and Controlled vs. Uncontrolled Gaps
The uncontrolled U.S. gender pay gap stood at 82 cents on the dollar in 2026. The controlled gap sat near 99 cents once factors such as role, experience, and hours were equalized. Entertainment salaries followed the same split. High-profile cases drew attention while the controlled metric masked structural differences in access to leading roles. National data tracked similar ratios across industries. Hollywood remained an outlier because individual contracts could swing by millions. The distinction between controlled and uncontrolled gaps clarified why anecdotes about specific actresses rarely matched aggregate statistics. Women paid less than male co-stars continued to surface in both controlled and uncontrolled measurements.
Persistent Structural Challenges
Studies show roughly $1.1 million unexplained gap per film even after controlling for budget and genre. Academic 2026 analysis frames the Hollywood pay gap among super-rich earners as a contract and casting issue rather than simple discrimination. Lead actresses still received fewer offers in tentpole projects. Negotiators continued to anchor pay to prior quotes that reflected earlier disparities. The result was a slow adjustment curve even when box-office performance matched or exceeded male counterparts. Women paid less than male co-stars appeared across decades of data because the mechanisms that set those rates stayed consistent. Broader reforms would require changes in how projects are greenlit and how talent is packaged for financiers.
The cases documented here span television, film, and news formats. They trace a line from individual negotiations to industry-wide lists. Resolutions such as back pay and donations provided partial remedies. Updated earnings data showed progress at the top while the broader gap persisted. Structural analyses pointed to casting patterns and quote systems as durable factors. The record remains useful for tracking how entertainment handles compensation when women paid less than male co-stars become public knowledge.
