Dwayne Johnson has topped Forbes magazine’s list of the highest paid male actors, earning $64.5m (£48.8m) in the last year – nearly $20m more than his female counterpart, Jennifer Lawrence.
The former wrestler, also known as the Rock, more than doubled his earnings from the previous year thanks to lucrative roles in the Fast and Furious franchise and the disaster movie San Andreas. Second in 2014, he bumped Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr, who had topped the list for three years running, from the top spot.
Forbes’s annual best-paid actors lists, which are divided between men and women, have again highlighted the huge pay gap between genders. Lawrence’s earnings are only 72% of Johnson’s, slightly lower than the pay disparity between white men and women in the US who earn an average wage.
Eighteen male actors took home over $20m, compared with only four female stars. Among them was Jackie Chan, who came second to Johnson with a pay packet of $61m. Matt Damon, paid $55m over the last year for starring in hits such as The Martian and Jason Bourne, Tom Cruise ($53m) and Johnny Depp ($48m) rounded out the male top five.
Lawrence is the world’s sixth highest paid actor. She earned $46m over the last year, putting her above male stars such as Ben Affleck ($43m) and Vin Diesel ($35m). The Hunger Games star, who wrote last year of about the injustice of being paid less than “lucky people with dicks” after the Sony hacks revealed she was paid less than her male American Hustle co-stars, is one of the few women paid anywhere near as much as the leading men. Second on the female list is Ghostbusters star Melissa McCarthy ($33m), who wouldn’t make the male top 10. The lowest paid man on the male list of 20 (Harrison Ford – $15m) earned $5m more than the lowest paid woman of the female list of 10 (Indian star Deepika Padukone – $10m).
The lists also suggest older women are discriminated against when it comes to pay. Of the top male earners, 95% are over 40, compared to half of the women. Ford, at 74, is the oldest actor on both lists. The ages of the female stars are not listed on the Forbes press release, but Lawrence, 26, is the youngest.
Earlier this year Johnson, whose family struggled to pay rent when he was a teenager, reacted to the news that he was the highest paid actor on Forbes’s Celebrity 100 list by taking to Instagram, writing that his pay packet was “an anchoring reminder to continue to work even harder”. Lawrence, the daughter of a construction worker and a children’s camp manager, doesn’t have a social media presence and has not made a statement about her pay.
Forbes publishes the figures in a week when a new study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that women in the UK are on average earning 18% less than men in similar jobs. Despite dealing with some of the world’s best-paid artists, the issues they raise are relevant to everyone, said Sam Smethers, the chief executive of the women’s rights charity The Fawcett Society.
“This isn’t just a story about women at the top, it’s about women in every sector, at every level,” she said. “It reminds us all that it’s a structural problem we’re dealing with. It can happen to anyone. It can certainly happen to some of the biggest stars in the business. It helps to draw attention to the issue and that will keep the pressure on.
“The thing we have to remember though is that there are millions of women who are earning average salaries or less and will think, ‘What has this got to do with me?’ It’s important that we think about how to keep the focus on those women, although we want all women to be fairly paid.”
The lists, which show the actors’ earnings pre-tax and before the deduction of management fees, were produced by Forbes using data from Nielsen, Box Office Mojo and IMDb and interviews with agents, managers and lawyers. They are published at a time when female stars are becoming less hesitant in publicly criticising the entertainment industry for unfair pay. In May, House of Cards star Robin Wright told an audience at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York that she had threatened bosses at Netflix with going public unless she was paid the same as her male co-star, Kevin Spacey. In the same month, Mad Max: Fury Road star Charlie Theron, number six on this year’s list, spoke about her experience of campaigning for the same pay as her co-star The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Chris Hemsworth, reports The Guardian.
Male stars are typically less likely to be asked about the pay disparity and comment on the issue less frequently. Among the few is Tom Hiddleston, who in October last year told the Guardian that equal pay for women in film should be “signed, sealed, delivered”.
Top 10 world’s highest paid male actors 2016
1. Dwayne Johnson – $64.5 million
2. Jackie Chan – $61 million
3. Matt Damon – $55 million
4. Tom Cruise – $53 million
5. Johnny Depp – $48 million
6. Ben Affleck – $43 million
7. Vin Diesel – $35 million
8. Shah Rukh Khan – $33 million
8. Robert Downey Jr – $33 million
10. Akshay Kumar – $31.5 million
Top 10 world’s highest paid female actors 2016
1. Jennifer Lawrence – $46 million
2. Melissa McCarthy – $33 million
3. Scarlett Johnsson – $25 million
4. Jennifer Aniston – $21 million
5. Fan Bingbing – $17 million
6. Charlize Theron – $16.5 million
7. Amy Adams – $13.5 million
8. Julia Roberts – $12 million
9. Mila Kunis – $11 million
10. Deepika Padukone – $10 million
