Bryce Dallas Howard has spoken out about the disparity between what she and costar Chris Pratt were paid for the Jurassic World movies in the latest showing of a huge Hollywood pay gap.
In an interview with Insider, Howard said the pay gap between herself and Pratt had been underestimated in earlier reports.
Four years ago, Variety reported that both actors scored big pay rises for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the 2018 sequel to the smash-hit reboot of the franchise.
According to the report, Howard was paid $8 million for Fallen Kingdom—20% less than Pratt’s $10 million paycheck.
However, Howard said in Monday’s interview that those reports didn’t come close to unearthing the true gap between the lead actors’ earnings from the film.
“I was paid so much less than the reports even said, so much less,” she said. “When I started negotiating for Jurassic, it was 2014, and it was a different world, and I was at a great disadvantage. And, unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies, and so your deals are set.”
She did not elaborate on exactly how much either she or Pratt was paid—but she added that the two discussed the pay gap, and he helped her secure equal pay for other deals related to the franchise.
“Whenever there was an opportunity to move the needle on stuff that hadn’t been already negotiated, like a game or a ride, he literally told me: ‘You guys don’t even have to do anything. I’m going to do all the negotiating,’” Howard said.
“I love him so much for doing that. I really do, because I’ve been paid more for those kinds of things than I ever was for the movie.”
Hollywood pay gap
The pay gap between male and female stars in blockbuster movies has been more openly discussed in recent years.
In 2019, actress Michelle Williams said she felt “paralyzed” when she found out she was earning just 1% of what Mark Wahlberg was being paid for reshoots of the movie All the Money in the World.
Meanwhile, Gillian Anderson won an equal pay battle in court in 2016 after revealing she had initially been offered half what her X-Files costar David Duchovny was set to be paid to star in a revival of the series.
In an interview last year, however, Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence said she understood why she had earned less than Leonardo DiCaprio for Netflix’s Don’t Look Up.
“Look, Leo brings in more box office than I do,” she told Variety. “I’m extremely fortunate and happy with my deal.”
In late 2019, Roberto Pedace, a professor of economics at Scripps College, published an analysis which found that, on average, top female actors were earning just 38% of the salaries being earned by top male actors.
