In case you didn’t feel poor enough already, Forbes has gone ahead and done their usual ranking of the highest paid actors in the world. At the top this year are two somewhat surprising names, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jennifer Lawrence taking the top of the male and female lists respectively.
According to Forbes, Johnson tops out the list with a $64.5 million pay check, coming out several million ahead of the runner-up Jackie Chan, who only – ahem – brings in $61 million with films in China. Matt Damon came in third due to The Martian (he made $55 million this year), while Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp are just really slumming it with $53 and $48 million, respectively.
Over with the ladies, Jennifer Lawrence made $46 million, given The Hunger Games finale, and the upcoming Passengers. Melissa McCarthy is right behind her with $33 million, while Scarlett Johansson lags behind on a scant $25 million. Are you feeling poor yet?
There is, of course, a really big question with all of those numbers – no, not “why are already rich people are getting paid so much to play pretend?” The split between Johnson and Lawrence is massive, with Lawrence at the top of the list making less than Johnny Depp at number five. Something is not right there. Not right at all. It highlights the continuous and systemic problem of the wage gap, albeit with numbers that would make the gods cry.
While it’s hard to feel particularly sympathetic to people that make more money in a year that most of us will ever see in our lives, the gender gap is pretty striking. Also striking is the statistic that women are three times more likely to be seen nude in their films than their male co-stars. So Hollywood’s sexism problem remains pretty much static. Are Dwayne Johnson’s biceps really worth that much more than Jennifer Lawrence?
