When it comes to the past decade, few actors have had a more illustrious career than the talented Emma Stone.
The 28-year-old actress has starred in a huge number of Hollywood blockbusters and most recently won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in La La Land.
Despite all that, the Birdman star has revealed she still has to fight for equal pay in movies and is often only paid the same amount as her male counterparts because they agree to take a pay cut.
Speaking to Out magazine alongside tennis pro Billie Jean King and actress Andrea Riseborough, Stone revealed her starring role in Battle of the Sexes - an upcoming movie based loosely on the 1973 match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs - brought to light huge parallels with the movie industry.
Actors Ryan Gosling (L) and Emma Stone pose on the red carpet. Photo / Getty
The iconic 1973 match came about after Riggs, who had been one of the world's top tennis players in the 1940s, challenged King to a match.
"The parallels in this movie are pretty fascinating," Stone told the magazine "We began shooting in the spring of 2016, when there was still a lot of hope in the air, and it was very interesting to see this guy - this narcissistic, self-focused, constantly-stirring-the-pot kind of guy - against this incredible, qualified woman, and at the same time be playing Billie Jean, with Steve [Carell] playing Bobby Riggs," she said.
Stone went on to explain women striving for equal-pay in Hollywood is still a massive issue.
"At our best right now we're making 80 cents to the dollar," she said.
"Hollywood works on quotes, so if somebody's going to pay a huge actor $US52 million to be in a movie or a franchise, he's going to have a higher quote than anyone else. There are maybe one or two women that have a quote that's as high as a guy's, because most films are about white males," she added.
The 28-year-old star then went on to reveal that when she is actually paid the same as her male counterparts, it's mostly because they agreed to a pay cut.
"In my career so far, I've needed my male co-stars to take a pay cut so that I may have parity with them. And that's something they do for me because they feel it's what's right and fair," she said.
"That's something that's also not discussed, necessarily - that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say, 'That's what's fair.' If my male co-star, who has a higher quote than me but believes we are equal, takes a pay cut so that I can match him, that changes my quote in the future and changes my life," Stone added.
But despite Stone being lucky enough to have male co-stars willing to take pay cuts, her co-star in Battle of the Sexes Andrea Riseborough hasn't been as lucky. "I don't know how many films I've been in - 20, 25 films, something like that. And I've never had the experience of a guy taking any sort of pay cut. In fact, I've been number one in films before and been paid a lot less," she said.
Battle of the Sexes, which is based on the iconic 1973 match where Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs, hits Australian cinemas on September 28.
