Priyanka Chopra was turned down for a movie role because of the colour of her skin.
Priyanka Chopra
The 'Baywatch' star admitted it really "affected" her when she was turned down for the movie because of her "physicality".
She said: "It happened last year. I was out for a movie, and somebody [from the studio] called one of my agents and said, 'She's the wrong - what word did they use? - 'physicality'. So in my defense as an actor, I'm like, 'Do I need to be skinnier? Do I need to get in shape? Do I need to have abs?' Like, what does 'wrong physicality' mean? And then my agent broke it down for me. Like, 'I think, Priy, they meant that they wanted someone who's not brown.' It affected me."
And the 35-year-old actress is dismayed by the gender wage gap.
She told InStyle magazine: "We've been taught for eons that women need to fight each other, clamber and climb on top of each other to get that one job. And, now we're seeing through it ... I feel it every year, especially when you're doing movies with really big actors, whether it's in India or America.
"If an actor is getting 100 bucks, the conversation will start with max, like, 8 bucks. The gap is that staggering. In America, we don't talk about it as brashly, whereas in India the issue is not skirted around. I've been told straight up, if it's a female role in a movie with big, male actors attached, your worth is not really considered as much.
"A producer-director said to me, 'Well, you know how it is in these big tentpole movies with the big boys. This is the budget for the girl, and we can't move beyond that,' which was, like, a measly five percent of what [the male lead] was getting. It happens in both countries, it's just that here, it's hidden behind other things. In America, everyone is so worried about being liable that they don't want to say anything wrong, but they end up doing it anyway."
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