Emma Stone reveals ‘incredible’ male co-stars have taken pay cuts to ensure wage equality

The actress said “multiple” actors have been “really incredible” towards her

Equality: Actress Emma Stone

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Emma Powell7 July 2017

Emma Stone has revealed some of her male co-stars are helping with the fight for equal pay by taking pay cuts to match her wage.

Stone – who picked up the Best Actress gong at this year’s Academy Awards – said “multiple” actors have been “really incredible” in ensuring she is not discriminated against for similar roles.

“In my career so far, I've needed my male co-stars to take a pay cut so that I may have parity with them,” she told OUT magazine. “And that's something they do for me because they feel it's what's right and fair.

“That's something that's also not discussed, necessarily – that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say, ‘That's what's fair.’”

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Stone was speaking as she promoted her new film Battle of the Sexes – a retelling of the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

Praising King she continued: “If my male co-star, who has a higher quote than me but believes we are equal, takes a pay cut so that I can match him, that changes my quote in the future and changes my life.

“And this is Billie Jean's feminism, and I love it – she is equality, man: equality, equality, equality.”

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Stone, who has worked with actors from Leonardo DiCaprio to Ryan Gosling, continued: “It’s not about: ‘Women are this and men are that.’ It is, ‘We are all the same, we are all equal, we all deserve the same respect and the same rights.’

“And that's really what I've been so grateful for with male co-stars – when I've been in a similar-size role in films, and it's been multiple people who have been really incredible and said, ‘That's what I want to do. That's what's fair and what's right.’”

Stone’s Battle of the Sexes co-star Andrea Riseborough hasn’t been as lucky with pay.

She said: “I don’t know how many films I’ve been in – 20, 25 films, something like that. And I’ve never had the experience of a guy taking any sort of pay cut. In fact, I’ve been number one in films before and been paid a lot less.”