Amanda Seyfried Says She Was Paid Fraction Of Her Male Costar In Recent Blockbuster

Amanda Seyfried knows how Hollywood works. That doesn’t mean the Ted 2 actress has to like what’s going on, especially when she’s getting paid just a fraction of what a male costar is making. Amanda Seyfried also knows that there are actors and actresses that get paid more because they are a bigger box office draw. It doesn’t appear the starlet believes that was the case in a recent blockbuster movie she appeared in, where she says she was paid just 10 percent of what her male costar made.

Seyfried isn’t saying which movie this happened in, but Amanda was talking about the situation in an interview with the Sunday Times. Amanda says the situation happened a few years ago and since then, Seyfried has paid more attention to gender equity, especially when it comes to compensation. “A few years ago, on one of my big-budget films, I found I was being paid 10 percent of what my male costar was getting,” Amanda Seyfried told the paper. “And we were pretty even in status.”

Amanda’s breakout role was as the ditz in Mean Girls, and Seyfried believes perhaps Hollywood bought her acting job a bit too much. Since then, she starred in films such as Mamma Mia!,Dear John, In Time, and Les Miserables. “I think people think that just because I’m easygoing and game to do things, I’ll just take as little as they offer,” Amanda added in the interview.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this interview is that Seyfried made her thoughts known just a few weeks after another Mean Girls star, in the form of Lizzy Caplan, made very similar comments. That alone seems to hint that Amanda isn’t an outlier here, and that Seyfried is actually one of many women in the acting business who have had to put up with that kind of treatment. The rest of the interview hints at the fact that the actress has actually turned down roles because the pay was so obviously less than what male counterparts were being offered. Because the star isn’t saying which film the 10 percent pay situation happened, we’ll never likely know what studio was involved or whether the male star knew he was being paid so much more than her. For her part, the actress says she now feels as though every performer has to make their own decision as to whether or not they are going to walk away. It seems clear that Amanda Seyfried will, indeed, walk away if she feels the pay scale is unfair.

[Photo by Neilson Barnard / Getty Images]