Salma Hayek: Time's Up on Actors' Fat Paychecks

Fresh off a silent protest on the Cannes red carpet over the dearth of women-directed films to play the festival, Salma Hayek is beating the drum for pay equality, telling the Guardian that the leading men in Hollywood need to take a pay cut: "Time's up. You had a good run, but it is time now to be generous with the actresses." For example, an actor attempting to command a $9.7 million salary on a film with a $10 million budget leaves "nothing for actresses." "I will be hated for saying this [...] I hope I can get another job," Hayek says, though with what the Guardian calls "the confidence of a woman unlikely to go short of work." But, Hayek says, "pay disparity is going to take awhile ... because they still want to pay you the exploitative salary they paid you before. We should have been angrier sooner. We should have come together sooner—that is what did it." (More Salma Hayek stories.)