Salma Hayek – Male Actors Need To Take Pay Cuts For Equality

Chloe Melas, CNN.com, reports that actress Salma Hayek believes it is time to take drastic measures to close the male/female pay gap in Hollywood. –

“Salma Hayek wants to close the pay gap in Hollywood, but she acknowledges that it’s going to take a lot of work to make that happen.

“Pay disparity is going to take a while,” Hayek said at the Women in Motion panel at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. “Because they still want to pay you the exploitative salary they paid you before.”

After joining Cate Blanchett and 80 other women on the steps of the Palais on Saturday to call for gender parity across all industries, Hayek sat down a for the panel in which she reiterated the need for equality in the movie industry. Blanchett said the 82 women represent the total number of female directors who have walked those steps since 1942 compared to the 1,866 male directors who walked those steps in the same period.

“It’s an adjustment, we need to all start adjusting and work together,” Hayek said. “But also the actors have to work together because if the male actors are asking for such big numbers, that part of it belongs a little bit to the women and in the past it was never given and the movie doesn’t get done because they cannot pay the actors what they were making…The actors have to say ‘OK, time’s up, I had a good run but now it’s time to also be generous with the actresses in the films.'”

On Monday, Cannes Film Festival artistic director, Thierry Fremaux, signed a pledge to promote gender parity and transparency at the festival.

“We will be more engaged,” Fremaux said to the press, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We must question our history and our habits. The world has changed and needs to change even more.”

Hayek, who has been vocal about the alleged mistreatment she was subjected to by Harvey Weinstein, said that although she’s glad to see women speak up against imbalances of power, she wishes it hadn’t taken so many years.

“We should have been angrier sooner,” she said. “We should have come together sooner.”

Hayek says that the Me Too movement can be empowering for men as well.

“It is a very exciting time for men now,” Hayed said. “Because men have the opportunity to rethink what it means to be a man, and this comes with a lot of freedom.””