“Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star, and everybody's in the movies, it doesn't matter who you are,” goes the lyrics of the song ‘Celluloid Heroes,’ by The Kinks. However, the male-dominated world of showbiz is set for a change, with actresses leaving a bigger pecuniary footprint on Hollywood Boulevard’s iconic Walk of Fame.
Cumulatively, the world’s 10 highest paid actresses raked in $172.5 million between June, 2017, and the same month from the previous financial year. The glitzy, make believe world of La La Land in which Emma Stone essayed the role of a struggling actress, has been kind to her in real life. Stone banked $26 million pretax in the 12-month scoring period.
Despite a lean year in terms of movie releases, Jennifer Aniston comes a close second with earning amounting to $25.5 billion on the back of endorsement deals with the likes of Emirates airlines, Coca-cola subsidiary Smartwater, and Aveeno. The sale of her stake in the hair-care line Living Proof, to Unilever for an undisclosed amount in December 2016, added to the Friends actress’ windfall gains this year.
Jennifer Lawrence, who took the crown last year, has been displaced to third spot, while comedienne Melissa McCarthy, Mila Kunis, and Emma Watson round up the top six. Watson, who starred in the year’s highest grossing film, Beauty and the Beast, is a debutant to this list.
The inflationary trends observed in Hollywood should not be seen as a one-off. A study titled Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment, that was published in 2016, found that female characters fill only 28.7% of all speaking roles in film.
Among all forms of dissipation of video content, film was found to be less likely than broadcast or cable to show women aged 40 or older. Streaming was the most likely, with females filling 33.1% of roles for middle age and elderly characters.
Actresses are not alone in demanding parity in reimbursement. Celebrities like tennis star Serena Williams and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, have also railed for equal pay.
While the earnings of top actresses have spiked, Hollywood is still far from achieving an even playing field for those who throng to the sun dappled shores of Los Angeles in search of fame and fortune.
The stellar box office returns of women-centric films such as Wonder Woman and Girls Trip might turn out to be a bellwether for change in the El Dorado of the cinematic universe where the wage gap between the sexes is shrinking, albeit at snail’s pace.