Actresses will continue to be underpaid: Priyamani

Pay disparity between actresses and actors has been a point of discussion for a while now. Many of the female stars have been raising their voice to address the bias in an attempt to bring about a change.

But actress Priyamani says this disparity has been there from time immemorial and will probably continue to exist. She has a reason as well.

“I’m not finding fault or blaming the industry, but the heroes have always dominated the film industry. Even though the trend is slightly changing nowadays as we see a few more heroine-oriented films coming up, this is short-lived. I don’t think a heroine-oriented film has the capacity to pull an audience like a hero-oriented film in any film industry.

The audience simply don’t find a heroine picking a fight with 10 guys as convincing as a hero. So the industry always sticks to psychological thrillers and ghost movies for heroine-oriented projects and this can sustain only for a short time.

The South Indian industries especially don’t even think of movies like Fashion or Queen. Naturally, the hero, who has a larger market value and does five fights in a movie demands more money than the heroine who has a lesser market value.

Of course, Malayalam has a slightly different way of working because here at least if the movie is good, it gets some mileage by word of mouth even if you don’t have big heroes. But that too has a limit,” says Priyamani.