Actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Their pay differences have been made clear in Forbes' annual list. Photo/Getty
By Anita Singh
The Hollywood gender pay gap has been laid bare in figures that show highest-paid actress Emma Stone is out-earned by 14 male actors.
Stone earned $26 million (around $35 million NZ) in the year up to June 2017, due in part to the success of the hit musical La La Land.
But she would only rank 15th in an overall table of Hollywood's - and Bollywood's - biggest earners.
A list of the highest-paid men, published today by Forbes magazine, showed that she was paid less than Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Adam Sandler, Jackie Chan, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Cruise, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hanks, Samuel L Jackson, and her La La Land co-star Ryan Gosling.
Wahlberg is the highest paid actor in the world with 2016-17 earnings of $68 million ($93m nz), followed closely by Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) on $65 million ($89m NZ).
Wahlberg topped the list thanks to soaring fees for films including Daddy's Home 2 and Transformers: The Last Knight, according to Forbes. His earnings have doubled compared to the $30m ($41m NZ) he made in 2016.
Highest riser on the list is Chris Hemsworth, whose earnings are up 250 per cent on the previous year due to the success of the Marvel movies.
Nineteen male stars earned $15 million ($20m NZ) or more in the past year - the names above plus Ryan Reynolds, Matt Damon, Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans and Chris Pratt.
Only five women made the same: Stone, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lawrence, Melissa McCarthy and Mila Kunis.
Three of these actresses saw their earnings increase compared to 2016, including Stone, whose $26m ($35m NZ) takings are more than double the $10m ($13m NZ)she made in 2016.
Stone has campaigned for equal pay, and said recently that her male co-stars have supported her.
"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. 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,'" she said.
"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.'"
The pay gap can be attributed to the dominance of action blockbusters and to a dearth of opportunities for older women. In the list of top 10 actresses, the oldest woman is Julia Roberts, 49. All but three of the male top 10 are aged 50 or over.
Natalie Robehmed, Forbes associate editor, said: "This pay disparity comes down to roles: in release schedules dominated by superhero movies and brawny blockbusters, there are simply fewer parts for women that pay the sizeable backend profits that result in leading men's large paydays, or the franchise sequels that permit aggressive negotiation for favourable deals.
"According to a 2016 study, women comprise just 28.7% of all speaking roles in movies and only a quarter of roles for characters over the age of 40 - an ageism and lack of opportunity not facing Hollywood's leading men.
"Until there are an equal number of high-paying roles, there will continue to be an inequality in the paychecks of Tinseltown's very richest."
The Australian site cited a 'heightened threat level' as the issue.