Sharon Stone waded into the Hollywood gender pay gap row by disclosing: “After Basic Instinct, no one wanted to pay me.”
According to The Guardian, Stone made the comments at a fashion event in Miami, Florida for her sister Kelly Stone.
Addressing the audience, Stone said following the release of the 1992 film, which made her a household name, she would cry over the unequal payment of men and women in the industry.
She said: “After Basic Instinct, no one wanted to pay me. I remember sitting in my kitchen with my manager and just crying and saying: ‘I’m not going to work until I get paid’. I still got paid so much less than any men.”
Stone is the latest actress to speak about the gross inequalities between male and female actors in Hollywood, joining the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Paltrow spoke out after it emerged her Iron Man co-star Robert Downey Jr was the highest paid actor of 2015.
Downey Jr earned $111 million, while the highest paid actress, Jennifer Lawrence, earned $39 million.
Paltrow said: “Nobody is worth the money that Robert Downey Jr is worth. But if I told you the disparity you would probably be surprised.”
“Your salary is a way to quantify what you’re worth. If men are being paid a lot more for doing the same thing, it feels shitty.”
Arquette brought the issue to mainstream attention when she pleaded for “wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America” during her acceptance speech for her role in Boyhood at the Oscars in February, 2015.
