Olivia Colman slams Hollywood pay disparities and says she'd earn more if she were a man

Olivia Colman is wondering if she'd get there quicker if she were a man.

The Oscar-winning "The Favourite" star, 50, called out pay disparities between male and female actors in an interview with CNN, arguing that she would be earning more if she weren't a woman.

"Research suggests that (women) have always been big box office draws, but male actors get paid more because they used to say they draw in the audiences, and actually, that hasn't been true for decades," Colman said. "But they still like to use that as a reason to not pay women as much as their male counterparts."

The "Crown" star added that even though she has won multiple Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs and more awards, she is "very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I'd be earning …a lot more than I am." While she didn't mention any specific pay disparities she has experienced, Colman said she knows of one case where there was an alleged "12,000% difference."

In a previous interview with Radio Times, Colman pointed to the success of female-led films like "Barbie" and "Bridesmaids" to refute the notion that men are bigger box office draws and thus should earn more than women. "People say men get paid more because they get more bums on seats," she said. "That's a lie! It can be proved in the box office. I don't know why we're still having to discuss it."

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In 2014, a FiveThirtyEight analysis of 1,615 movies released between 1990 to 2013 found no evidence "to support the idea that films with women perform any worse at the box office than films without them." In fact, a study released by Time's Up in 2018, which analyzed the top-grossing films from 2014 to 2017, concluded that movies led by women performed better at the box office than those led by men, according to the Associated Press.

Colman is the latest star to speak out against pay gaps between men and women in Hollywood. In 2015, Jennifer Lawrence famously wrote an essay asking, "Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co‑Stars?" The following year, Forbes magazine found that Lawrence, the top-earning female star, earned about 71% as much as the top male star, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Recently, Forbes' list of the highest paid stars of 2023 consisted of eight men and two women, Margot Robbie and Jennifer Aniston.

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In 2022, Lawrence told Vogue that the Hollywood pay gap was still an issue following reports that she made $5 million less than Leonardo DiCaprio for their film "Don't Look Up."

"It doesn't matter how much I do," Lawrence told Vogue. "I'm still not going to get paid as much as that guy, because of my vagina?"

In the case of her pay gap with DiCaprio, the "Hunger Games" star told Vanity Fair that he "brings in more box office than I do," and she was "extremely fortunate and happy with my deal."

But Lawrence, 33, added, "In other situations, what I have seen — and I'm sure other women in the workforce have seen as well — is that it's extremely uncomfortable to inquire about equal pay. And if you do question something that appears unequal, you’re told it's not gender disparity but they can't tell you what exactly it is."

In another famous instance, USA TODAY reported in 2018 that Michelle Williams was paid less than $1,000 for reshoots of the movie "All the Money in the World," while her co-star Mark Wahlberg earned $1.5 million for the same thing. Williams later spoke on Capitol Hill for Equal Pay Day in 2019 and said that when this pay disparity was revealed, she felt "paralyzed in feelings of futility."

Contributing: Andrea Mandell, Maria Puente and Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY