Amy Adams Wants Equal Pay for All Women: ‘I Know What My Truth Is, I Know What I Fight For’

In her nearly two decades in Hollywood, Amy Adams has experienced nearly everything in the industry, including facing unwanted advances and discovering that she was being paid significantly less than her male co-stars. Now that she’s more established in her career, however, Adams is pledging to use her position to help women who might not have the resources that she does.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Adams shared that she feels that most women have experienced “feeling unsafe rejecting somebody.” She later joked that that was the reason “why I started playing nuns and virgins.”

Adams later addressed how while she experienced both sexual harassment and the wage gap, it especially affected women who didn’t have her level of fame or resources — a woman who might be “a farmworker or a waitress or a teacher or an assistant at a drug company.” She shared that she’s using her platform to speak up about equal pay because she understands that not everyone can afford to do so, something that she educated herself about after the Sony hack, which revealed that she and American Hustle co-star Jennifer Lawrence were making considerably less than their male counterparts on the film (Lawrence notably addressed this in an op-ed for Lenny Letter in 2015.)

“I know what my truth is, I know what I fight for and the things I let go of based on them saying, ‘Take it or leave it,'” Adams said. “And I make those decisions for myself and I don’t hold anybody else accountable for them.”

Adams doubled down on her desire to help all women achieve equal pay later in the interview.

“if I’m going to use my voice to talk about pay discrepancy, it’s going to be for women who don’t have the same platform as me…helping the next generation further the cause is going to be the thing I want to focus on.”