higest paid actress list*
1. julia roberts
2. cameron diaz
3. nicole kidman
4. reese witherspoon
5. drew barrymore
6. halle berry
7. sandra bullock
8. angelina jolie
9. renee zellweger
10. jennifer lopez
seems to me you have to be fair skinned with blonde hair to get anywhere in show biz. what's a brown eyed, brown skinned girl to do?
*source: women in entertainment
1. julia roberts
2. cameron diaz
3. nicole kidman
4. reese witherspoon
5. drew barrymore
6. halle berry
7. sandra bullock
8. angelina jolie
9. renee zellweger
10. jennifer lopez
seems to me you have to be fair skinned with blonde hair to get anywhere in show biz. what's a brown eyed, brown skinned girl to do?
*source: women in entertainment
6 lovely comments:
mrcrazyone said...
It is sad in this day and time that things are the way they are. I don’t even want to talk about what Ms. Berry had to do in order to get into this list. I can’t condemn her for doing what she did. But it is sad that she had to do it to get where she is.
-Me said...
Rest assured they'd all LOVE to be Oprah! ;-) More money. Total autonomy over her career. Extremely well-respected. AND one of Barbara Walters most fascinating people.
But this list...What is the last good movie that Sandra Bullock has been in? And I'm not a fan of most of the people on the list anyway. They are very GOOD actresses, they are just popular.
Jennifer Lopez adds some variety as well. Though I think that she's a better actress than a singer, and she can't sing to save her life.
Although to play devil's advocate, looking at the population,
http://www.radford.edu/~junnever/bw.htm
If 13% of the country are African Americans, divide by half and say that 7% are females of that. So a list of the top 10 represents Hally Berry in the top 10%, consistent with their percentage in the general population. (This won't work once you move to a list of the top 100 I'd guess.)
mrcrazyone said...
I don’t understand your number reasoning. To me since this list only includes women you shouldn’t divide the 13 in half. So if everything was evenly spread out there should be 1.3 African American women on the list kind of like the 2.5 kids. Technically since Ms. Berry is only 50% African American there are only .5 black women on the list.
melyssa said...
i am going to sound terribly mensan here, but anyway ... i don't think you'd use the entire u.s. population to arrive at your figure but rather the ratio of african-american top paid actresses/african-american actresses vs caucasion top paid actresses/caucasion actresses.
i just don't think this is something you could be technical or mathematical about. because then you'd have to account for all groups includes asians and mexicans or lesbians.
the fact of the matter is there are a lot of good (completely) african-american actresses who are not paid well because their skin is too dark or their hair is too kinky. and that's the sad thing to me. because what about the little african-american girl who dreams of one day being a successful actress but knows it's not possible because of her physical make up.
it's not fair. but neither is life. i'm just attempting to share my perspective.
-Me said...
JLuv
The 13% that I cited to included ALL African Americans within the general population. So specifically FEMALE African Americans -- this list -- I guestimated at approximately half of that 13%. Since there are more females than males in the US, I rounded up to 7% from 6.5%. (Though I had no idea that Halle Berry was only half black.)
Melyssa
We are in my job now! ;-) In employment law, there are several different ways that we analyze a disparate pay claim. One is the protected classes representation within the general population -- what I used. The other is qualified individuals within a certain area like affirmative action plans weigh (i.e. it would be the percentage of African American actresses compared to the percentage of caucasian actresses -- and then I'd actually guess that the African American representation is MUCH smaller than in terms of real actresses (which I'm defining as self sufficient as their career) representation, because most of the roles are written for caucasian woman (which actually highlights your point). But anyway, since I don't have access to that number, the former - the total number - IS in fact acceptable for such an analysis. You were looking at one specific group - you can do so under a disparate pay analysis. Even though there are other minority groups that you are not considering. Welcome to our world. ;-)
However, I'd STILL guess that when you look at more than a small sample (meaning if you look beyond the top 10 to what they are all paid) that argument would fail. It just managed to somewhat work with a smaller sample.
Are you really surprised that racism still exists in tv though? So does sexism? They all make much less than men. There aren't nearly the same number of $20 million females as males. The roles are all younger actresses - once you get old, you don't have roles anymore, whereas the same is not true for me. The entire industry is based solely on appearance - and that affects scripts (which is really the problem. NOT what they are paid. What they are paid is based largely on what they bring in, their box office numbers. Th problem is the scripts. Until quality scripts are being written for African American (and older) actresses, they won't ever be paid the same amount b/c they can't pull the same amount at the box office. At the end of the day, people go see a quality movie, not an actor.
Sarah .O. said...
what do u guys think about the representation of african american women in movies