Jennifer Lawrence's Catching
Fire is poised to cross the $350 million domestic mark this weekend,
becoming only the third film to do so this year, and putting it within shouting
distance of Iron Man 3, which gathered $409 million this past summer.
This year has been a robust one for women at the Box Office. In
addition to Lawrence's success, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy both
headlined a pair of $100 million+ grossers at the box office, and Jennifer
Aniston/Kristen Bell also were the leads in films of similar grosses.
That being said,
being the Number One film of the year continues to be a "man's
world." Since 1980, only one film had a woman get equal/top billing
and was also the highest-grossing picture domestically: Titanic's Kate
Winslet (who is technically second-billed, but only due to the alphabet).
Otherwise literally every other film had a man as the definitive lead.
This wasn't always
the case. While Box Office Mojo (the only site I trust explicitly in
these sorts of matters) only goes back to 1980 in their grosses, films of the
1950's through the 1970's regularly had women such as Mitzi Gaynor, Natalie
Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, and
Ali McGraw starring in the top-grossing film of the year.
So as a bit of fun
today (and because it's cold out and I don't want to venture into the iciness),
I thought I would track the past 25 years of cinema, and look to see what the
biggest role for a woman in the top-grossing film is, as well as the highest-grossing
film where an actress gets top billing. Let's take a look (we'll skip
2013 since we've already gone there)!
1988
Top Grossing Film: Rain
Man
Main Female Star:
Valeria Golino, who is Tom Cruise's girlfriend and gets third billing
Highest-Grossing Film
With a Top-Billed Actress: So, for those who are curious, I'm going with
top-billed star or someone who gets a tie for top-billed, so even though, say,
Winona Ryder might have the biggest part in Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton
is still the champ there. I'm also skipping Working Girl here,
because in the posters I can find, Melanie Griffith is below Harrison Ford and
Weaver gets second billing, proving that the billing isn't alphabetical. Therefore,
I’m going with Jamie Lee Curtis and A Fish Called Wanda, who gets
alphabetical top-billing (shared with John Cleese, Kevin Kline, and Michael
Palin), and was the twelfth highest-grossing film of the year.
1989
Top Grossing Film: Batman
Main Female Star: Kim Basinger as Michael
Keaton’s girlfriend, and she gets third billing
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
I probably should have looked at how difficult it would be to pick out
“top-billed” before I started this project. One could argue that Kirstie Alley is the lead in Look Who’s Talking, but she gets second
billing to John Travolta. Morgan
Freeman is before Jessica Tandy alphabetically for Driving Miss Daisy, but the way the poster is structured they don’t
share top-billing. Therefore, the
crown goes to Meg Ryan who shares
top-billing with Billy Crystal in When
Harry Met Sally… in the eleventh highest-grossing film of the year.
1990
Top Grossing Film: Home Alone
Main Female Star: Christopher Guest favorite
Catherine O’Hara plays Kevin McAllister’s mother, and gets sixth-billing.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Patrick Swayze outranks Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg on the Ghost poster, so that’s a no. Therefore, thanks to our now
patent-pending alphabetical clause, the award goes to Julia Roberts who shared top-billing in the fourth-highest grossing
film of the year in Pretty Woman.
1991
Top Grossing Film: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Main Female Star: This is one of the only films
on this list that I haven’t seen, and it’s bumming me out because it has a
female star in second billing (our first) and also one that kicks some
ass-Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
In our first case of an actress not sharing the top billing (though she does
share the title), Paige O’Hara, the voice of Belle in Beauty and the Beast takes the prize
with the third highest-ranking film of the year.
1992
Top Grossing Film: Aladdin
Main Female Star: As the voice of Aladdin’s
girlfriend Princess Jasmine (what does it say that we’re only five films in and
the description “girlfriend of the main character” has been used thrice),
voiced by Linda Larkin, lands third billing.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Everyone only remembers Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, but she gets third billing to Keaton and
DeVito. Demi Moore gets
above-the-line billing on A Few Good Men,
but the ranking isn’t alphabetical so she loses to Tom Cruise. That leaves us with the seventh-highest
grossing film of the year, Sister Act,
and its star Whoopi Goldberg as our victors.
1993
Top Grossing Film: Jurassic Park
Main Female Star: Though really the stars are
the effects and Steven Spielberg, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler lands in the
number two spot behind Sam Neill.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Our first actress to repeat is Meg Ryan, who shares top-billing with Tom
Hanks in the number five grosser Sleepless
in Seattle.
1994
Top Grossing Film: Forrest Gump
Main Female Star: As Forrest’s girlfriend Jenny,
we have Robin Wright with second billing.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
It’s hard to imagine now, but Sandra Bullock wasn’t a big enough star in 1994
to outrank Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper for billing. Jodie Foster was above-the-line for Maverick, but Mel Gibson still gets higher
billing than her (and the above-the-line isn’t alphabetical). That means we hit our lowest-ranking
yet with 13th place.
The victor is Susan Sarandon, who was Oscar-nominated for her
work in The Client.
1995
Top Grossing Film: Toy Story
Main Female Star: Oof-all the way down in
seventh place is cowboy Woody’s girlfriend Bo Peep, voiced by Annie Potts.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Whew-I thought for a second that Mel Gibson was going to get top-billing on Pocahontas, but thankfully that went to
the title character, voiced by Irene
Bedard, for the fourth
highest-grossing film of the year.
1996
Top Grossing Film: Independence Day
Main Female Star: I was a little worried when I
remembered this very male-dominated film at how far we’d have to go for a
woman, but it was only fourth billing, with Mary McDonnell (playing the First
Lady and wife of a main character) being the main female lead.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Oh so close-were it not for Independence
Day, we would have had a female-led top-grosser, as Helen Hunt gets first-billing for the number two film of the year, Twister.
1997
Top Grossing Film: Titanic
Main Female Star and Highest-Grossing Film with
a Top-Billed Actress: In the only year that we’re going to cover where this
happens, Kate Winslet shares
top-billing with Leonardo DiCaprio for this romantic epic.
1998
Top Grossing Film: Saving Private Ryan
Main Female Star: This is probably the only time
I’ve ever hoped for Armageddon over Saving Private Ryan, as women would have
done much better there. While
there are bit parts played by female actors in this film, you have to go
through dozens of men to get to them, so I’m not even going to bother finding
out what the ranking was. We’ll
just say does not apply and move onward.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Thankfully Cameron Diaz was a big
enough star to land a top-billed slot for (Number Three) There’s Something About Mary.
Otherwise we would have had to go well outside the Top 10 to land a
female-led film. Clearly 1998 was
not a great “Year of the Woman” at the movies.
1999
Top Grossing Film: Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace
Main Female Star: Here is where franchises
really and truly start to take over the tops of the box office, and so we’ll
see more repeats on these names.
Here we find third-billed Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala (she isn’t
the “girlfriend” role until episode two, so we’re good for now).
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Our second actress to appear twice on this list, Julia Roberts doesn’t even need an alphabetical clause to get her
top-billing for Runaway Bride, the
ninth highest-grossing film of the year.
2000
Top Grossing Film: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Main Female Star: So apparently for a while
there films no one liked became the highest-grossing films of the year. Jim Carrey’s gaudy misadventures had a
young Taylor Momsen in second billing for her work as Cindy Lou Who.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Continuing the trend of films no one really likes anymore, we have the fifth
highest-grossing film (and our third film to star a repeat actress on the
list), What Women Want with Helen Hunt sharing top-billing with Mel
Gibson.
2001
Top Grossing Film: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Main Female Star: This is genuinely hard to
tell, because the credits don’t go in order of screen-time, per say. I’m going to just go with conventional
wisdom, then, and say that Emma Watson was in third billing, though it may well
have been Maggie Smith for this particular installment.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
The romantic epic doesn’t have split billing, so Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor is out-of-luck to Ben
Affleck. Therefore, we have to go
to the twelfth-place film Hannibal,
where our alphabetical clause probably gets Julianne Moore in on a technicality (Hopkins was clearly top-billed
here), but they’re both above the line and even on the poster, so it counts.
2002
Top Grossing Film: Spider-Man
Main Female Star: Playing, once again,
Spider-Man’s girlfriend is Kirsten Dunst.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
It’s arguable whether Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman share top-billing
on Attack of the Clones, but I’m
erring on the side of no without a poster to back-me-up. Therefore, the winner is the surprise
hit of 2002, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and
its star Nia Vardalos, who landed
the Number 5 spot (can you imagine something like that happening even just ten
years later?).
2003
Top Grossing Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Main Female Star: Oddly enough, this is the only
time the Tolkien series has made it to the top of the heap. Like Harry Potter, the billing here is very off in relation to actual
screen time, so the winner is either Miranda Otto, Cate Blanchett, or Liv
Tyler, though only Otto gets a robust role in the film. At least if it’s Otto it’s not the main
character’s girlfriend (though she’s still in love with him).
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
The alphabetical rule blocks our second woman of color getting in here, as
Queen Latifah is second-billed to Steve Martin in Bringing Down the House.
The same is true for Diane Keaton in Something’s
Gotta Give. Therefore we have
to do our fourth double-appearance and our first ever tie with the 21st
(yes, that’s not a typo) highest-grossing film of the year Freaky Friday starring Jamie
Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in
the dual top-billing.
2004
Top Grossing Film: Shrek 2
Main Female Star: Cameron Diaz plays Shrek’s
wife in this film, and lands third billing for her efforts.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Drew Barrymore suffers from the alphabetical billing clause in 50 First Dates, which leads oddly to
another 21st place finish with another actress (similar to Lohan)
who had a very brief period of box office success: Sarah Michelle Gellar in The
Grudge.
2005
Top Grossing Film: Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Main Female Star: Natalie Portman, now decidedly
in the girlfriend mode, gets second billing. Also, in a side note-how odd is it that this film did SO
much better ($90 million) than that year’s Harry
Potter? This is not something
commonly thought of because of Harry’s spellbinding
international grosses, but the Star Wars films
perform much better domestically than the boy wizard.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Our second film on this list so far to get a woman into the second-highest
grossing film, Tilda Swinton lead
the field with The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but could only manage the silver.
2006
Top Grossing Film: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Main Female Star: Pulling in third billing is
Keira Knightley as, you guessed it, Orlando Bloom’s girlfriend (and the third
leg of the Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle).
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Probably our eldest actress so far to get cited, in 17th place (a
mild improvement, though nowhere near where we were a decade ago), we have Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, which won her a massive comeback and an
Oscar nomination.
2007
Top Grossing Film: Spider-Man 3
Main Female Star: Again, this is one of the only
top grossers I never got around to (which is odd, because I was seeing a lot of movies during this
period). Either way, we have
Kirsten Dunst once more as Peter Parker’s girlfriend.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
The alphabetical clause discounts Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up as well as Jessica Alba in Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (a film so little looked up,
its video game pops up before it does in IMDB). Instead, we have Amy
Adams taking the prize for her Princess Giselle in Enchanted, coming in at twentieth place.
2008
Top Grossing Film: The Dark Knight
Main Female Star: Oh, it’s a comic book film so
you just know that it’s a girlfriend role: Maggie Gyllenhaal playing Rachel
with fifth place billing.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
And for the first time ever, we have a female-led film series. Say what you want about Kristen Stewart and this cinematic
series, but few other women in the past ten years can compete with her box
office pulls. Twilight gets us seventh place. It’s also worth noting that 2008 was a surprisingly robust
year for women at the Box Office: Sarah Jessica Parker’s Sex and the City, Meryl Streep’s Mamma Mia, and Angelina Jolie’s Wanted
were all in the Top 20.
2009
Top Grossing Film: Avatar
Main Female Star: I was genuinely curious
considering her lack of star power and the fact that Sigourney Weaver was a
bigger name at the time, but Zoe Saldana (in second) did indeed get the top
spot here.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
In fourth place, we have our second appearance by Kristen Stewart, though it’s worth noting that Sandra Bullock’s The Blind Side got in eighth place this
year, meaning that after roughly a decade where women could barely scrape into
the Top 20, here we had two films in the Top 10 that were female-led.
2010
Top Grossing Film: Toy Story 3
Main Female Star: Unlike fifteen years earlier,
we didn’t have Annie Potts, but instead Joan Cusack as our top actress, and
Cusack comes in as third with the rootenest, tootenest Jessie.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Despite being the title character, Mia Wasikowska was outranked by the movie
star that is Johnny Depp for Alice in
Wonderland. That means for the
third year in a row we have Kristen
Stewart in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
(and another female-led film in Tangled,
which rounded out the Top 10). Eclipse ranked fourth.
2011
Top Grossing Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Main Female Star: Ten years after the question
mark, this is still a bit up in the air, but it does appear that Emma Watson
managed to slide into second billing for the final installment of the series.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Kristen Stewart continued her trend,
with Breaking Dawn Part 1 being the
third highest-grossing film of the year.
The next highest-ranking was The
Help’s Emma Stone at thirteenth place.
2012
Top Grossing Film: The Avengers
Main Female Star: Well, at least she isn’t a
girlfriend role. In fifth place is
Scarlett Johansson, playing one of the six avengers, the Black Widow.
Highest-Grossing Film with a Top-Billed Actress:
Jennifer Lawrence supplants Kristen
Stewart for the first time in four years, with The Hunger Games coming in third to Breaking Dawn Part II’s sixth place. The highest-ranking woman not in a franchise (at least it
didn’t seem intended to be a franchise at the time) was Kristen Stewart once
more in Snow White and the Huntsman.
And there you have it, my friends-an exhaustive
look at the box office and women’s roles in it. It isn’t difficult to see the sexism on display-more than
half of the principle roles in the highest-grossing films were women playing
the main character’s love interest or girlfriend, and were it not for Bella
Swan and Katniss Everdeen, female-led motion pictures would have almost no
position in the Top 10’s of the past decade. What about this list most surprised you? What would it take for Hollywood to fix
what is clearly a problem? Why
don’t people see more female-led motion pictures? Share in the comments!
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