Michelle Williams Was Already Making a Fraction of Mark Wahlberg's 'All The Money in the World' Paycheck

It's time for a little sexism-in-Hollywood math problem. Michelle Williams, an actress who has been nominated for four Oscars, was paid $625,000 for her role in the drama All the Money in the World. Her male costar, Mark Wahlberg, who has been nominated for two Oscars, earned $5 million for the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. If half the Oscar noms equals eight times the paycheck, can you solve for the X-factor (the X-factor seems to be a Y chromosome)?

A serious payday discrepancy for All the Money in the World made headlines last week when it was revealed that Williams earned just around $1,000 for her work on the reshoots (which were necessary after Keven Spacey was booted from the film and replaced by Christopher Plummer) while Wahlberg made $1.5 million. There was public shock and outrage, and eventually, the Transformers star donated the entire paycheck to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams' name. The actress made sure to highlight the larger issues surrounding the pay disparity and Time's Up mission at large after the donation, explaining in a statement, "Today isn’t about me. My fellow actresses stood by me and stood up for me, my activist friends taught me to use my voice, and the most powerful men in charge, they listened and they acted. If we truly envision an equal world, it takes equal effort and sacrifice. Today is one of the most indelible days of my life because of Mark Wahlberg, WME, and a community of women and men who share in this accomplishment. Anthony Rapp, for all the shoulders you stood on, now we stand on yours."

While the donation was a gesture in the right direction, it was also a gesture that obviously can't do anything to solve the real problem of valuing an objectively more lauded actress so much less than her male costar. Still, while the news of this latest instance of a sexist pay scale in Hollywood is disheartening, there have been some recent strides in closing that pay gap. Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo spoke out about negotiating for her massive $20-million-a-year contract with the show, explaining that though former Grey's star Patrick Dempsey was often held up as a reason the show didn't need to keep her by giving her a raise, "I'm 48 now, so I've finally gotten to the place where I'm OK asking for what I deserve, which is something that comes only with age."

It seems like as more pay discrepancies are becoming public, more female stars are feeling that same sense of empowerment to ask for the pay they deserve.

Related: The Problem With Privilege and Fighting for Equal Pay