Michelle Williams meets with lawmakers to push equal pay for equal work

To mark Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, actress Michelle Williams headed to Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about closing the gender pay gap.

Standing with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and members of the Democratic Women's Caucus, Williams spoke about how she felt when she learned in 2017 that her All the Money in the World costar Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million to reshoot scenes, after Kevin Spacey was removed from the film. Williams was paid less than $1,000, receiving just $80 a day for the same amount of work.

Williams said she was "paralyzed in feelings of futility," but the pay disparity "came as no surprise to me. It simply reinforced my life-learned belief that equality is not an inalienable right and that women would always be working just as hard for less money while shouldering more responsibility at home." Williams credited actress Jessica Chastain for sharing what happened on Twitter, getting the story out to a broad audience. Wahlberg donated his pay to the Time's Up Defense Fund, and his agency, William Morris Endeavor, gave another $500,000.

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Williams said she won't be satisfied until "I can exhaust my efforts ensuring that all women experience the elevation of their self-worth and its connection to the elevation of their market worth." As for her compensation, Williams revealed that she finished a job two weeks ago, and was "paid equally with my male costar."