Oscar winner claims Hollywood pays men 10 times more than women
Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank spoke to a group of Loyola Marymount University students touting her new movie, The Homesman, as a “feminist story.”
Swank also complained to students that she gets paid “10 times” less than her male counterparts.
During her talk, Swank compared life for women in the mid-1800’s to modern day life.
Life for women in the 1800’s is no different than life for women today, Hilary Swank told a group of students last week.
Speaking about her new movie, The Homesman to an audience at Loyola Marymount University School of Film & TV (SFTV), Academy Award-winning actress Swank compared women’s equality today to that of the mid-1800’s.
“This is a feminist movie. To me it’s about the objectification and trivialization of women and it takes place in the mid-1800’s, but us women know exactly what that feels like now in 2014,” Swank said to the students on Nov. 12. “So even though, talking about gay, lesbian, and transgendered issues and how far they’ve come, same with equality for women, and how far we’ve come, yet how far we still need to go.”
WATCH: Swank says that women's equality is the same in 2014 as it was in the 1800's.
In the movie, Swank’s character teams up with Tommy Lee Jones to transport three women with severe mental illnesses across the country, according to IMDB.
In addition to comparing the plight of pioneer women to women in modern times, Swank celebrated Jones’ role in the movie, which she dubbed a “feminist story.”
“How great that Tommy Lee Jones...this person that people see as this rough man is at the helm of telling this feminist story,” she said. “I love that. I love how that in itself divides stereotypes.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Swank also lamented to students about how much women in Hollywood get paid compared to men.
“My male counterpart will get paid ten times more than me—ten times,” Swank said. “Not double, but ten times for the same job. We only have this much left for the female actress. I mean, there’s two genders on this earth. Both are compelling, interesting, diverse, wonderful in all their own separate ways. And yet there’s an influx of male roles, and there’s just not for women.”
Jones told the Guardian that while he isn’t labeling the movie as a feminist movie, “it would not be unfair to call it that.”
“I don’t think there’s a woman in the readership of the Guardian, not one, who hasn’t been objectified or trivialized because of her gender at one time or another,” Jones said. “And that’s what our movie is about.”
Swank’s talk at SFTV was part of the school’s The Hollywood Masters series. Stephen Galloway, executive features editor of The Hollywood Reporter, moderates the discussions which are open to all Loyola students.
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