Natalie Portman’s No Strings Attached salary was three times less than Ashton Kutcher’s
Is Ashton Kutcher three times as famous as Natalie Portman? Or is it maybe that she’s only one-third as talented as him? That doesn’t seem right. So, unless Hollywood salaries are decided by height, it seems pretty indefensible that Kutcher was paid three times as much as Portman (who really is quite tiny) for their dual leading roles in 2011’s No Strings Attached. The 35-year-old Academy Award winner revealed the gross financial asymmetry in a recent interview with Marie Claire.
“I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood,” she explained. “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.” And before a battalion of intentionally obtuse alt-right types storm Twitter to balk at Portman’s complaint at not being quite rich enough (too late!), she quickly clarified, saying, “I mean, we get paid a lot, so it’s hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy.”
She then pointed out that women in the film industry only make “30 cents to the dollar” compared with men, whereas in the general workforce, there’s a bit more parity with women making something closer to 80 cents. ”I don’t think women and men are more or less capable,” she said. ”We just have a clear issue with women not having opportunities. We need to be part of the solution, not perpetuating the problem.”