The latest leak targeting Sony Pictures has shown evidence of what could be considered sexism in the film industry: when it was time to shoot "American Hustle," Jennifer Lawrence's salary was lower than that of her male co-stars, despite her box office and critical success.
As discussions regarding the pay gap between men and women's salary becomes increasingly heated in the United States, yet another proof of what many have denied: even for the most famous actress in the moment, Jennifer Lawrence's salary is still lower than that of her male co-stars in a movie as critically successful as last year's "American Hustle."
According to the United Kingdom's Daily Mail, the recent Sony Pictures leak featured the numbers of Jennifer Lawrence's salary, as well as that of her co-stars Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jeremy Runner, Bradley Cooper and director David O'Russell. On one of the e-mails, there was an exchange between executives and representatives where it became clear that the two actresses were getting less than their male counterparts.
The information regarding Jennifer Lawrence's salary was taken from an e-mail from last year, on December 5, 2013. In it, Andrew Gumpert (the President of Business Affairs and Administration of Columbia Pictures) wrote to Sony Pictures' chairman Amy Pascal as well as Doug Belgrad (the President of SPE Motion Picture Group), telling them that Lawrence's lawyers had called him up to complain that the actresses were making less money than their male counterparts for the film's revenue.
The e-mail, as The Guardian notes, shows that Jennifer Lawrence's salary didn't match up to that of her peers. While not directly her salary but rather back-end compensation for the film's box office success.
"Got a steve warren/gretchen rush call that it's unfair the male actors get 9% in the pool and jennifer is only at 7pts," the email reads. "You may recall Jennifer was at 5 (amy was and is at 7) and WE anted in 2 extra points for Jennifer to get her up to 7. If anyone needs to top jennifer up it's megan. BUT I think amy and Jennifer are tied so upping JL, ups AA."
Later on, he added that Renner, Russell, Cooper and Bale were all making 9 percent of back-end profits, while Lawrence and Adams were only getting 7 percent each.
Unfortunately, Lawrence's salary wasn't the only worrisome feature in the hacked e-mails: according to The Daily Beast, other pay rolls in the company showed that the great majority of salaries larger than $1 million in Sony Pictures were given to men, by a margin of 16 to 1. Even the two co-presidents of production, who have the same job and one of them is male and the other female, have a difference in salaries of almost one million dollars.
