Jennifer Lawrence Delivers Smackdown On Gender Inequality, In An Essay For Lena Dunham’s ‘Lenny’

Last year, amongst other hugely controversial industry happenings, the Sony hack revealed that Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male co-stars for American Hustle. According to emails first unearthed by The Daily Beast, Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, and Jeremy Renner were all set to take home 9 percent of the back-end takings compared to both Amy Adams and J-Law’s 7 percent. And though that doesn’t sound like much, it’s really quite remarkable.

Off the back of the Hunger Games franchise, Lawrence was arguably the biggest name in the picture — a point the Sony co-chairman conceded when asked over email — and the figure was only met after some debate. Originally, she was set to get around half that of her male colleagues.

This hack also revealed similar practices going on inside the larger Sony staff. Salary documents revealed that just one of the 17 employees earning more than $1 million was female, and there was a huge divide in the pay of the two co-Presidents of Columbia Pictures. Despite doing the same job, Hannah Minghella (a woman) was paid $1.5 million and Michael De Luca (a man) was paid $2.4 million.

This is a familiar gap in the broader industry too. During this same year, Robert Downey Jr topped Forbes’ Highest Paid Actors list with a staggering $75 million (predominantly from The Avengers), whereas Angelina Jolie topped the actress’ list at just $33 million. While it’s hard to feel too much pity when both those figures end in the word “million”, the difference is significant. If Forbes were to combine a genderless list — as there have been calls for them to do — Jolie would have snuck in at number nine or ten ahead of Liam Neeson.

Cut to two years later and Jennifer Lawrence is sitting pretty as the highest paid female actor of 2015. Her $55 million earnings would clock her in at number two on the men’s list behind Robert Downey Jr who’s now made his way up to $80 million. For her latest film, Passenger, she’s set to earn $8 million more than co-star Chris Pratt but this victory took much work. Further deals with Sony nearly resulted in her walking away from the project completely.

Now, she’s finally spoken out in an essay penned for Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner’s new feminist newsletter Lenny. Here’s an abridged version:

“When it comes to the subject of feminism, I’ve remained ever-so-slightly quiet. I don’t like joining conversations that feel like they’re ‘trending’. I’m even the asshole who didn’t do anything about the ice-bucket challenge — which was saving lives — because it started to feel more like a ‘trend’ than a cause. I should have written a check, but I fucking forgot, okay? I’m not perfect. But with a lot of talk comes change, so I want to be honest and open and, fingers crossed, not piss anyone off.

“It’s hard for me to speak about my experience as a working woman because I can safely say my problems aren’t exactly relatable. When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need. (I told you it wasn’t relatable, don’t hate me).

“But if I’m honest with myself, I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled’. At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realised every man I was working with definitely didn’t worry about being ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled’. This could be a young-person thing. It could be a personality thing. I’m sure it’s both. But this is an element of my personality that I’ve been working against for years, and based on the statistics, I don’t think I’m the only woman with this issue. Are we socially conditioned to behave this way? … Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?

“I’m over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state my opinion and still be likeable! Fuck that. I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a man in charge who spent time contemplating what angle he should use to have his voice heard. It’s just heard. Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper all fought and succeeded in negotiating powerful deals for themselves. If anything, I’m sure they were commended for being fierce and tactical, while I was busy worrying about coming across as a brat and not getting my fair share. Again, this might have NOTHING to do with my vagina, but I wasn’t completely wrong when another leaked Sony email revealed a producer referring to a fellow lead actress in a negotiation as a ‘spoiled brat’. For some reason, I just can’t picture someone saying that about a man.”

There’s of course much more that can be added to this conversation — the situation is much more dire for women of colour for instance, regularly not even scoring a place on the Highest Paid Actors list — but this is an important place to start. Jennifer Lawrence is perhaps the most influential and sought-after female actor in the world right now, and even she has these problems.

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If you haven’t signed up for Lenny yet, get on it. There’s a good chance this piece would have never been written if the space was never created away from the noise of the regular media cycle, and also it’s a really great read. Their first three editions have included fascinating stories from queer women, women of colour, Hillary Clinton and an interview between Amy Poehler and a 12-year-old filmmaker. It is very good.

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Feature image via Lenny/Jennifer Williams.