Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman 'earned three-times less for film than co-star Ashton Kutcher'

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Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman 'earned three-times less for film than co-star Ashton Kutcher'

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12 January 2017

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Natalie Portman, who has won an Oscar and been nominated for another, is deemed by Hollywood to be worth a third of the value of Ashton Kutcher, a man best-known for sporting flares for television for eight years and marrying Demi Moore.

Portman, who is looking like a shoo-in for another Academy Award with her performance as Jackie Kennedy in Pablo Larrain's Jackie, revealed she was paid a third of what Kutcher earned when they both starred in 2011 rom-com No Strings Attached.

Despite the fact Portman and Kutcher shared the same amount of screen-time, Kutcher received a larger cheque for the Ivan Reitman-directed film because his "quote" – a means of estimating value in Hollywood – was triple the size of hers.

Portman told Marie Claire: "Ashton Kutcher was paid three times as much as me on No Strings Attached. I knew and I went along with it, because there's this thing with 'quotes' in Hollywood. His was three times higher than mine, so they said he should get three times more.

No Strings Attached - Trailer

Portman added that she became more incensed by the pay gap after making the film: "I wasn't as p---ed as I should have been. I mean, we get paid a lot, so it's hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy."

Comparing the difference to the national pay gap in the US, she said: "Compared to men, in most professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar. In Hollywood, we are making 30 cents to the dollar." In 2013, a report from Forbes showed that Hollywood's best paid actresses earned an average 40 per cent less than the city's best paid actors.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in American Hustle Credit: Snap Stills/REX

Portman is not the first woman to speak out about Hollywood's gender pay gap. Jennifer Lawrence has frequently spoken about inequality in the industry after leaked emails from within Sony's offices showed she was paid considerably less than her male co-stars in American Hustle, despite spending more time on screen.

Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Sienna Miller and Jacqueline Bisset are among the women who admit they were paid significantly less than their male co-stars.