Susan Sarandon Says Paul Newman Gave Her Slice Of ‘Twilight’ Salary To Close Pay Gap

Can you believe this guy? Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer March 8, 2018

Is it possible to fall more in love with Paul Newman?

Newman, the nicest Jewish boy that ever there was, gave away some of his salary for the 1998 movie “Twilight” when he realized his equally-billed female co-star was receiving unequal pay, Susan Sarandon told BBC5.

Speaking about women’s rights in Hollywood on Thursday morning, Sarandon told the radio station that though Newman, Sarandon, and their co-star Gene Hackman were given equal billing in the movie, Newman and Hackman were benefitting from a private deal with producers that the two men would receive the same pay. When Newman learned that Sarandon’s salary on the movie was significantly lower, she says, he told her, “Well I’ll give you part of mine.” Newman, who died in 2008, “was a gem,” she said.

Sarandon, who has been given to controversial political views in the past, reflected on recent changes in Hollywood, saying that “giving yourself sexually, or being drawn to power and wanting to have sex with someone that’s in power, is also a choice.” She added, “what we don’t want to have is being exploited and have the Harvey Weinsteins of the world holding it over your head and holding it over your project.” That, she said, is “the most despicable.”

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO