Jennifer Lawrence and Melissa McCarthy make big money – but men still make more

It hasn’t been a great week for working women: a study revealed that women in the UK earn 18% less on average than their male counterparts. The gap keeps widening after women have children, to as much as 33% 12 years after the birth of a first child.

But in case you thought the gender gap would not affect those who regularly walk red carpets of Hollywood and beyond – oh, how wrong you are.

The publication of Forbes’ Highest-Paid Actresses list this week revealed the earnings of the Top 10 female actors. There was no separate list for the highest-earning male actors this year, presumably because they had already featured in the wider 100 highest-paid celebrities list, which was published in July.

The cumulative worth of the 10 highest-paid male actors (topped by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, with $64.5m) came to $457m, up $26m from a year earlier.

Their female counterparts had total earnings of $205m – less than half that of the men’s total, and down $13m on last year.

Just two female actors made the Top 100 celebrity earnings list earlier this year: Jennifer Lawrence is said to have earned $46m, while Melissa McCarthy, fresh from an appearance in Ghostbusters, earned $33m.

They were joined by Scarlett Johansson ($25m); Jennifer Aniston ($21m); Bingbing Fan ($17m); Charlize Theron ($16.5m); Amy Adams ($13.5m); Julia Roberts ($12m); Mila Kunis ($11m) and Deepika Padukone ($10m).