Williams’ fight for equal pay

Michelle Williams is an unlikely champion for pay equity in Hollywood, said Amanda Fortini in Vanity Fair. The 37-year-old actress is normally “very, very private,” but she became the face of the gender pay gap last year after it was revealed that she earned less than $1,000 for nine days of reshooting scenes for a movie, while her male co-star, Mark Wahlberg, was paid $1.5 million. “You feel totally devalued,” she says, “but that also chimes in with pretty much every other experience you’ve had in your workplace, so you just learn to swallow it.” Williams’ career breakout came in the 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain; she and co-star Heath Ledger began a relationship and had a child. When Ledger died of a drug overdose, Williams and her 2-year-old daughter were hounded by paparazzi. “It was unmanageable to be stalked like that,” she says. “I’ll never forget going to the post office and seeing a sign hung on the wall for anyone with information about myself and my daughter to please call this number.” She has shunned publicity ever since. But with encouragement from fellow actress Jessica Chastain, Williams embraced the need to speak out about pay inequality. “A private humiliation became a public turning point.”