Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman starred in a romantic comedy called No Strings Attached. That sort of movie wouldn’t usually be on my radar screen but it’s making news because of the “wage gap” between men and women. It turns out that Kutcher made three times as much for the film as Portman did even though they both had leading roles.

Add Natalie Portman to list of stars ready to call cut on Hollywood’s gender wage gap.

The Oscar-winning actress revealed her male co-star Ashton Kutcher was paid a whopping three times as much as she was in their 2011 rom-com “No Strings Attached” — even though she’d already established herself as one of the industry’s leading ladies.

The “wage gap” between men and women that left wing politicians routinely cry about is a myth. It is based on comparing the average salaries of men with the average salaries of women. The average salary for women is lower than the average salary for men because women more often choose—something we’re always told they have a right to do—lower paying careers. Also, more women than men choose to leave the workforce for a time to raise children. The left would have you believe that this is a systemic problem where everything else being totally equal, women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man is paid to do exactly the same job. This is nonsense. Even many feminists agree that this is nonsense. This is also not what is happening in Hollywood.

Hollywood stars didn’t submit resumes after graduating from acting college hoping to land an entry level job with an acting company where if they work hard doing bit parts they might get promoted to supporting roles or even one day leading man or leading lady.

The amount of money paid to an actor in a movie is a function of the budget for the film, how much the actor demands, and how much money the film is likely to make based on that actor appearing in it. It’s a negotiation. It’s like figuring out how much you’re going to pay a guy to paint your house. That is totally different from the salary statistics misused to make it look like women are getting ripped off.

“I knew and I went along with it because there’s this thing with ‘quotes’ in Hollywood,” Portman told Marie Claire U.K. “His (quote) was three times higher than mine, so they said he should get three times more.”

If I’m understanding that correctly, Kutcher demanded more money than she did and the studio agreed to pay it. Is that a gender pay gap or just an example of someone not asking for what they think they’re worth? Nobody is going to voluntarily pay you more than what you’ve asked for regardless of what your sex is.

But seriously, there ought to be a law. Government mandated wage controls for movie stars. Like their hero Obama said, “at a certain point I think you’ve made enough money.” Maybe place an upper limit on what a movie career can pay and force actors to get out of the business after that in order to make room for others just to make things more fair. I think there are any number of big government solutions to this problem and we should try most of them.

“I wasn’t as pissed as I should have been,” she continued. “I mean, we get paid a lot, so it’s hard to complain, but the disparity is crazy.”

It’s okay though. Ashton Kutcher has exercised his male authority to approve of her complaining.

So proud of Natalie and all women who stand up for closing the gender pay gap! https://t.co/AV1uYY6KIe

— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) January 11, 2017

You go fight for that extra money, Natalie! Meanwhile I’ll be over here counting mine…which is three times more than yours…which is unfair…but I’m still not giving you any of it.